2024 KGRI Working Papers

We must achieve a state of "informational health" to enjoy the benefits of information and communication technologies while avoiding the harms of selective information consumption and fostering a healthy discourse environment consistent with constitutional principles.
This Joint Statement outlines actions for various stakeholders, including users, businesses, and governments, to promote "informational health" and ensure its accessibility to all participants in the discourse space.
Note: This Joint Statement (ver. 2.1) updates version 2.0, published in May 2023 (only Japanese version available). It incorporates insights from the symposium "The Shadow of the Attention Economy and 'Informational Health': To Create a Wholesome Speech Space by Comprehensive Knowledge" held in March 2024.

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Digital technology during the COVID-19 pandemic arguably did not live up to the high expectations placed on it. In hindsight, this gap allows us to refine our understanding of how to use it effectively in the future. Japan's response is particularly interesting, as it diverged from other East Asian countries like South Korea and China in both key metrics and the type of digital technology employed.
Given its underperformance in the first year, Japan was prominently suggested in February 2021 to emulate other countries in the Asia-Pacific and pursue a zero covid strategy. Two different justifications for the supposed superiority of the elimination strategy at that time can be identified: epidemiological efficacy and rationality.
That these arguments appeared convincing but ultimately proved untenable can be explained from Shoshana Zuboff's perspective of surveillance capitalism, which criticizes the predominance of social physics. In contrast, Japan's aerosol and droplet simulations on the supercomputer Fugaku helped devise countermeasures that did not aim for elimination. Jiro Kokuryo's theory of cyber civilization helps to understand how these measures related to the idea of trust. Accounting for the importance of self-restraint (jishuku) in Japan's response can serve to further develop this theory.

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This paper presented essential conditions for conflict resolution through diplomacy and coercive means: NCPMI (No veto, Commitment to peaceful resolution, Political Pain, Mutually hurting stalemate, and Initiative). In particular, Sagara used the 1994 coercive diplomacy and Carter Agreement in Haiti as a case study to illustrate that these conditions were met. This paper examined how the no veto (i.e., consensus) in the Security Council and the effective use of coercive force by the United States led to President Aristide's reinstatement. The analysis in this paper also intends to provide a framework that policymakers can refer in formulating strategies for conflict resolution.

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Japan relies on more than 90% of its oil imports from the Middle East. On the other hand, the political and security situation in the Middle East is changing drastically as U.S. engagement in the region declines. From the perspective of energy security and the maintenance of the Liberal International Order, Japan's policy toward the Middle East also needed to change.
Former PM Shinzo Abe actively engaged in the Middle East, due not only to the vital importance of stability in the Middle East region for Japan's energy security but also to the increasing number of terrorist attacks and armed conflicts amid instability in the region. The Abe administration has also emphasized its engagement in the stabilization of the Middle East from the perspective of contributing to the stability of the international order under its Proactive Pacifism policy.
The Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) concept/strategy can serve as the axis of Japan's Middle East policy as a geo-strategy and multilateral cooperation mechanism. However, there is no consensus among the Quad countries (Japan, the U.S., Australia, and India) leading the FOIP on whether the Indo-Pacific region includes the Middle East and Africa.
The current upheavals in the Middle East and the increasing political and military presence of Russia and China along with the reduction of US engagement in the region have a significant impact on Japan's economic activities and security. Japan needs to deepen, expand, and diversify its relations with the Middle East, not only for energy security, but also for the safety of sea lanes, the maintenance of the Liberal International Order, and geopolitical strategy in the Indo-Pacific.

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