This study examines the duality of Japan's human rights diplomacy from a comparative foreign policy perspective, focusing on the Japanese government's divergent responses to two cases of grave human rights violations: the issue of Japanese military "comfort women" and North Korea's abduction of Japanese citizens. Although both cases fall within the same category of systematic, state-perpetrated human rights violations, Japan's response has varied according to its own positionality in each—as the perpetrator in the former and the victim in the latter.




Employing a cross-case comparison along six dimensions—(1) acknowledgment of facts, (2) acknowledgment of responsibility, (3) mobilization of legal arguments, (4) treatment of victims, (5) education and memory, and (6) identity and nationalism—the study identifies a directional asymmetry in Japan's approach. On the "comfort women" issue, the Japanese government maintains that the matter has been "finally and irreversibly" resolved. On the abduction issue, by contrast, it insists that the matter remains unresolved and continues to press for accountability. It frames the abductions not only as a grave threat to national sovereignty and citizen safety but also as a universal human rights concern for the international community.




Notably, Japan positions itself as an architect of human rights norms when it is the victim, yet contests even the recommendations of established treaty bodies when it is the perpetrator. This reveals a duality: Japan is assertive in the production of norms but selective in their application. This selectivity has operated not only along the perpetrator–victim axis but also according to political calculation. Japan's human rights diplomacy has thus tended toward the instrumentalization of human rights norms rather than their realization, applying them selectively as political circumstances dictate.