JAPAN STARTED LIFE in Tier 2. There can be little question that this marked the first of a succession of highly critical pronouncements on the multifaceted trafficking scene within Japan that led to considerable domestic embarrassment. The nation suddenly discovered not only that it was judged guilty in the court of international public opinion but that it was joined in its sin by some particularly nasty regimes. Japan was doubly disgraced. To find that it was co-graded in its Tier 2 listing with France (only temporarily, it must be said) was of little consolation when a shocked Japanese government learned that Guatemala, Hungary, Moldova and Vietnam were also among those on the same mediocre, if not dismal, ranking.

Japan's often deserved post-war self-image as a civilized nation of repute had taken a severe knock. Such grading hardly fitted in with the popular belief that the nation had been a staunch supporter of international humanitarian agencies and a long-time advocate of what its Ministry of Foreign Affairs enjoyed calling UN-directional diplomacy. Technically, of course, the TIP reports were not sponsored by the United Nations but to be listed by Japan's only ally as a pariah state in a highly-publicized comparative trafficking report undoubtedly hurt.

Even prior, however, to the inaugural TIP report the United States had made shown its dissatisfaction with aspects of Japan's human rights record through publie diplomacy. In its country reports on Human Rights Practices for 1999 Tokyo was cited as having ‘problems in several areas’, despite acknowledging that the ‘Government generally respected the human rights of its citizens’. Among the areas of concern was reference to inadequate public education over respect for human rights, citing ‘sexual harassment, violence in the home, and discrimination against the elderly, the disabled, minorities, and foreigners’.