ANY CELEBRATIONS ON Tokyo's accession to Tier One status proved remarkably short-lived. By June 2020, the United States had deemed that Japan should be demoted back down to its long-familiar and unfortunate Tier Two ranking, (p.328) The event was clearly a disappointment and the fact that Germany and Italy, two other close allies of the US had also been given a similar grading was little consolation. Yet, perhaps with the advantage of hindsight, this might well have been anticipated in the light of the State Department's earlier comments on the unsatisfactory nature of Japan's handling of its overseas traineeships.

For years outside observers have been critical of the widely publicized faults of these schemes. They stubbornly persist, however, because of Japan's own employment difficulties and the close ties between small businesses and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party. It would take concerted programmes involving state subsidies, improved wages and working conditions and major changes in the overall labour market to correct the situation in semi-urban and rural Japan. Yet on the evidence of a succession of TIP reports it remains unlikely that the US will be able to spur thejapanese state to confront the trainee issues with the result that Japan may well fester in the basement, despite the vocal claims of former Prime Minister Abe throughout his lengthy term in office that Japan was a prominent upholder of global human rights standards. In this instance US-initiated public diplomacy has failed.

There are also additional reasons why Japan may now be less willing to move much further over trafficking abuses in which the United States’ own behaviour comes into play. Firstly, thejapanese mediais giving greater attention to examining the injustices expenenced by Asian migrants in the US and secondly the admissions in the State Department's recent analysis of America's own record on trafficking. If Japan has failures over traineeships and underage women and prostitution, the twentieth anniversary of the first TIP Report in June 2020 listed much that deserved to be corrected over trafficking within the United States. The change in tone by both Secretary Pompeo and Ambassador Richmond in their opening remarks carefully underlined present disappointments as well as noting their nation's past achievements.