The campaign to popularise concern about the Pacific island countries was based on encouraging media coverage of regional developments. Media interest in Japan’s South Pacific diplomacy gradually developed in 1986. The general tone of these reports
borrowed heavily from Western media reporting of political issues in the region and was alarmist in the portrayal of the Soviet Union. An article in
The Japan Times
on 1 August, titled ‘Change comes to the American Lake’ was indicative of this approach.43 The frequency of these reports increased significantly towards the end of 1986, in the lead-up to the Foreign M inister’s visit to the region. Tanaka claimed that he orchestrated this coverage, to some extent, by selective feeding of information to the media, often exaggerating the extent of Soviet intrusion.44 During and immediately after Foreign Minister Kuranari’s visit to the region in January 1987, media interest was at its height, fuelled partly by dramatic events such as the military coup in Fiji in May 1987. Through1987 and to a less extent in 1988 media interest in strategic and political events in the Pacific island region continued.45
42 Dennis Yasutomo, ‘Why Aid? Japan as an “Aid Great Power” ’, p.501.
43 This article included a warning that the era of ‘unchallenged and unquestioned American domination of the Pacific’ was over and unless care was taken to allocate resources and attention to the region, ‘the hitherto absent Russian bear would be ready to pick up the pieces’. Other articles that concentrated on Soviet activities in the Pacific region were published in the Asahi shimbun, 1 July (morning edition)
1986 and Nihon keizai shimbun, 27 August 1986.
44 The media coverage of the Kuranari trip is covered in more detail below. According to Tanaka, the Soviet ‘threat’ was deliberately exaggerated in media briefings in order to highlight the need for a Japanese initiative in the region. This approach was questioned at times by the Soviet Union Division in MOFA, which was concerned about the possible effect o f such reporting on relations with the Soviet Union.
In addition to media coverage of issues in the region, the work of the FAIR Committee for Oceania and the Pacific Islands helped focus on the issue of Japan’s aid to the region. FAIR was established in 1985, under the auspices of MOF. It grew out of Prime Minister Ohira’s Pacific Basin Cooperation Study Group.46 FAIR is essentially a policy think-tank with an international network of affiliate members. It oversees research on a wide range of policy areas and issues, promotes the exchange of information and interaction of policy makers, business people and academics and sponsors various symposia, conferences and study programs.
The main task of the FAIR Committee for Oceania and the Pacific Islands was to develop a report on Japan’s aid policy to the Pacific island region. Although not released until early 1988, the drafting of what was called the Pacific Aid Initiative paralleled the development of Japan’s diplomatic approach to the region (the Kuranari Doctrine). The Director of the Oceania Division was one of the Committee members and initially viewed the FAIR Committee as a way to bring pressure on MOF to allocate a greater share of resources to the region. Five members of the Committee were from MOF while the Chairman of FAIR’S Executive Board was an influential former official of MOF — Yuichiro Nagatomi. Although not directly involved in the work of the Committee, Nagatomi was interested in the preparation of the Pacific Aid Initiative and helped to publicise and promote it. The assessment of some members of the Committee, including Tanaka, was that the Committee ultimately exercised very little influence on Japan’s aid policy, although it did build on the momentum of the Kuranari Doctrine. Its main contribution perhaps was to elaborate on aid policy recommendations for the region. In this context, it was of more interest to foreign observers, being the first major report in English on Japan’s aid policy to the Pacific island countries. As far as generating increased resources for the region, it was perceived to be far less significant than the Foreign Minister’s v is it47
One member of the FAIR committee was the Honorary Consul for Kiribati and Tuvalu, Tokugoro Kuribayashi. As the President of Nanyo Boeki Kaisha (NBK)
Corporation, Kuribayashi presided over one of the oldest Japanese trading companies in
45 Other events that helped keep attention focused on the Pacific islands included a conference in Western Samoa in August 1987, sponsored by the Association for the Promotion of International Cooperation (APIC) and MOFA. See for example ‘South Pacific No Longer the Isolated, Peaceful Island Paradise’, The Japan Times, August 10,1987. A Pacific islands conference in Tokyo in August 1988 sponsored by the Sasakawa Peace Foundation also attracted media interest.
46 The name FAIR is regarded by some in Japan as a pun on the call for ‘fair trade’ by the US and others, since FAIR was formed at a time o f intense trade friction between Japan and the US. 47 See Pacific Aid Initiative: A Proposal for Japanese Assistance to Pacific Island Nations, FAIR, Committee for Oceania and Pacific Island Countries, April 1988. Written by academic members o f the Committee, this report closely resembled the Kuranari Doctrine in its analysis of Japan’s role in the region and the principles and ideas that should inform aid policy. It also echoed the popular alarm about strategic and political developments in the region.
the Pacific islands. The NBK Corporation had dominated commerce in Micronesia and parts of the Gilbert Islands in the 1930s and 1940s. After the end of the Second World War, their operations had ceased but the company was ‘reborn’ in the 1950s and resumed operations in the islands. Amongst other things, it secured the contracts for projects supplied to the US Trust Territory of Micronesia by the Japanese government, under the terms of the 1969 reparations agreement.48 Kuribayashi became the Honorary Consul for Kiribati in 1983, and in that capacity he facilitated a number of ODA projects, acting as an advisor to both the Kiribati and Japan governments.
Kuribayashi actively supported a greater ODA presence by Japan in the Pacific. In the period leading up to the Kuranari initiative, he argued (both publicly and in a submission to the MOFA) for a greater effort by government and the private sector to promote economic development in the region. He warned that ‘the fragile Pacific island nations will be compelled to break away from the free world ... unless the Japanese Government and private sector join hands to make an all out effort to grapple with the problems of development aid’. Kuribayashi sought a ten-fold increase in Japan’s ODA to the region together with a greater effort by business in promoting joint ventures and infrastructure development. He also articulated a somewhat romantic idea of Japan’s role in the Pacific: declaring that he ‘felt strongly that the development of the industries and economies of the South Pacific nations is a mission entrusted to Japan’.49
Kuribayashi’s role was twofold: as an advocate in the campaign to increase aid to the Pacific islands and, perhaps more importantly, as a promoter of development projects that could channel increased Japanese aid as well as private sector investment to the region. The development with which he was most closely associated was the proposal to transform Christmas Island in the far east of Kiribati into an international space and communications centre. Kuribayashi, as the secretary to a Japan-based lobby group, the Pacific Space Centre Council, has been trying to attract Japanese support for the proposal. It is estimated that the total project, which envisages the development of a space shuttle launching base as well as tourism facilities, would require an investment (public and private) of $8 billion.50 Although the prospects for proceeding with the scheme remain uncertain, at least one component of the proposed development, a 1000
48 Claim — Trust Territory o f the Pacific Islands Agreement between the United States o f America and Japan, 1969. Details in Grant Goodman and Felix M oos, The United States and Japan in the Western Pacific: Micronesia and Papua New Guinea, Westview Replica Edition, Boulder, 1981. Details o f NBK Corporation’s activities are from Nanyo Boeki Kaisha, ‘History o f the Company’, NBK Corporation, Tokyo.
49 Tokugoro Kuribayashi, On Issues Relating to the Economic Development o f South Pacific Nations, Draft Submission, 7 October, 1986.
50 ‘Shuttle Base in the South Pacific’, Nikkei sangyo shimbun, 8 June 1987. The Japan government already maintains a satellite tracking station on Christmas Island and has built a hotel on the island to house technicians. For further details o f Christmas Island development plans, see Kokusai kaihatsu janaru, No.453 (3), 1993, pp.54-63.
ton passenger/cargo vessel, was provided under Japanese ODA to Kiribati in 1991 (valued at 1.2 billion yen).51