Diplomacy is a series of crises, and the navigational beacon for a nation is international law. This book is a collection of articles on six selected international legal issues concerning Japan. It addresses various issues, including self-defence, post-war legal issues, chemical weapons, the law of the sea, consular immunities, and hijacking. It is a legal documentary through which the reader can look into the minds of Japanese officials challenged by one crisis after another.
As a coherent whole, this book ably represents “Japan’s Practice of International Law” and remarkably portrays international law in action from a Japanese practitioner’s perspective.

Over more than four decades of a diplomatic career, Ambassador Horinouchi has been charged with legal affairs and treaties portfolios several times, in addition to Asian affairs and international intelligence analysis. Horinouchi is a graduate of Tokyo University and attended Nanjing University in China and Harvard Graduate School. He has been a lecturer on international law at Waseda University’s Graduate School of Law.