Introduction

Abstract

The extraordinarily rapid rise to economic prominence of Japan has cast a spotlight on its relations with the rest of the world and its place in the international system. There is little doubt that the country has the capacity to exert a profound influence in international affairs. It is, indeed, beginning to do so. In the late 1980s, the indicators of its emerging status as a major power accumulated: Japan became the world’s largest creditor and its largest aid donor. Tokyo became one of the Big Three global financial centres, and Japanese institutions came to dominate international capital flows: nine of the world’s ten largest banks and the top twenty-one financial institutions were, by the beginning of the 1990s, Japanese.