Yōsei-Shugi: The Mystery of the Japanese Request-Based Aid

It is intriguing how the request-based principle, which started as little more than a name for project formulation procedures, has come to attain a philosophy-like status in Japanese aid.1 This chapter examines three aspects of this mystery: (1) the context that elevated this practice to the status of a principle (shugi), (2) the basic logic used by the Japanese government to substantiate such a principle, and (3) the effects it had on recipient countries. This chapter argues that the request-based principle is a historical vestige that reveals the peculiarity of Japan as a latecomer to the field of foreign aid. The request-based principle has endured as a consistent undercurrent of Japanese aid since the end of the war, but it only attained the status of a principle in the late 1980s. By tracing the evolution of aid to practices of the war reparations period in the 1950s, this chapter explores how this principle became institutionalized as a defining feature of the “Japanese style” of aid provision.