A critique of texts on human security published by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan between 1998-2008 and made publicly available through the Internet is undertaken. Analytical and problematisation strategies focus on textual representation of discursive objects categorised broadly according to four poles: 1) the meaning and concept of human security, 2) reason and justification for the pursuit of human security, 3) events and phenomena posited as being in an antagonistic relationship with the condition of human security, and 4) relations between agents undertaking human security praxis. Critical and problematising strategies which had not yet been applied to Japan's human security discourse were applied to texts with a focus on comparing discursive formations and tropes both within and between official documents. These were derived from consideration of difference and inconsistency in representation of key discursive objects, identification of promoted and marginalised interests, implications for human security and freedom at the individual level, indication of omissions, silences and ambiguities in textual representation. As a whole, Japan's human security discourse is characterised by a finely detailed postulation of factors making up human security, high levels of representational inconsistency, an absence of theoretical elucidation, a complex system of rationalisation of human security praxis, and the postulation of ambiguous relationships between various agents of human security. Japan's human security discourse was found to share numerous characteristics with other human security discourses but was unique in situating the human individual as only one of a plurality of policy beneficiaries, conceptualising human security as an extension of state security, and being explicitly committed to the use of securitisation as a way to affect policy agendas.

Hee-Soo Kim

Papers

Human Security in the Western Pacific: The Asian Economic Crisis and Beyond 1