ATTENTION ON THE faults of Japan should not be allowed to mask significant problems elsewhere. Since much of the considerable criticism that Tokyo has received from overseas sources since the 1990s has come from the United States, it is necessary in the interests of any claims to fairness in a bilateral survey to examine Washington's own TIP structure and ask how vigilant Americans have been in defending and improving their own human rights record.

Its dissatisfaction with Japan's handling of trafficking issues, perhaps also linked to recalling that the US had been the architect of the human rights provisions in the 1947 Constitution and more recent disappointment over watching regional disputes on demands for apologies and compensation over the issue of Imperial Japan's treatment of the so-called ‘comfort women’ of the Asia Pacific War, should be no excuse for ignoring the US's own malpractices.

The fact, too, that throughout the Cold War era the United States had largely avoided the subject of rights when handling relations with Tokyo should also be underlined. More recent attention to issues such as global trafficking is surely one component of a larger and more welcoming political agenda that reflects a changed international environment.

We shall look in turn at the current American handling of issues centring on sexual and, then, labour trafficking, recalling that it was American initiatives under Presidents Carter, Clinton and George W. Bush that led to the birth of a formidable set of annual reports that continue to focus on specific state-by-state human rights violations.