Japan and the International Criminal Court

• In Event: The International Criminal Court at 25: Politics and Perceptions

Abstract

On July 17, 2007, Japan formally became a party to the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Japan's decision to join the ICC, and particularly its decision to join in 2007, is puzzling for a number of reasons. First, Japan's closest ally, the United States, is not a member of the ICC, and America's president in 2007, George W. Bush, was a vocal opponent of the court. Second, Japan was governed by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and both houses of Japan’s legislature were controlled by Abe's Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), a conservative party that traditionally has not put international human rights law at the forefront of its policy platform. Finally, the Asia-Pacific region has been consistently underrepresented in membership in the ICC in comparison to other regions, suggesting that regional diffusion dynamics and/or pressure are are unlikely to fully explain Japan's decision to join the ICC.

So, given these factors, why did Japan decide to join the ICC? This paper will address this questions by analyzing debates about the ICC in the Japanese Diet in the years leading up to the 2007 decision to accede to the Rome Statute as well as Japanese media coverage of those debates. This analysis will contribute to scholarship about Japan's view of its own role in the world as well as the promise and potential limitations of the ICC.

Author

• Michael Strausz, Texas Christian University