Japan Times : 'G-4' submits resolution on UNSC, finds just 23 backers

Japan, Germany, India and Brazil jointly submitted a resolution Wednesday at U.N. headquarters in New York to expand the U.N. Security Council, with only 23 other members listed as joint backers.

The four nations, coined the "Group of Four," submitted the resolution despite uncertainty over whether it would get the two-thirds approval, or 128 votes, needed for adoption by the U.N. General Assembly.
That's a far cry from what they needed.

Foreign Minister Nobutaka Machimura will head to London to meet with his G-4 counterparts Saturday to discuss their next move, and with nations from Africa to solicit their support.
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No nations in Asia, where Japan has provided official development assistance for decades and hoped to gather support, signed the resolution.
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China, which is against Japan's candidacy for the UNSC, also lobbied against it.
Japan cannot find support among any Asian nation in spite of their heavy development aid and investment, so they turn to corrupt the already heavily corruped Africa. It strikes me as odd as Japan has very little natural affinity with Africa. Most Japanese people I have heard speak of Africa see it as a distant continent they know very little about. For example I was surprised to find out that most of the Japanese I quizzed (incl. my wife) didn't know even the name of about half of the countries in Africa.

How are really Japan's relations with Africa ?

Looking at the statistics for immigration/emigration, only about 9,000 Africans live in Japan, and 6,000 Japanese in Africa - and that includes Egypt, Morocco and South Africa. In other words, there is virtually no population exchange (even for business or international organisations) between Japan and most of the 54 African nations. This is a stark contrast to the almsot 900,000 Japanese living in the rest of the world and about 2 millions foreigners living in Japan.

Looking at the Japanese Exports, Africa's share is a mere 1% of the total, and over 1/3 of that goes to South Africa. As for Japanese Imports, only 1.7% come from Africa, over half of which from South Africa.

This shows that the entire African continent has in fact very little inter-exchange with Japan. So that makes me laugh when Japan has to look at Africa for support. This is not only true for the UN, but also for the International Whaling Commission, and other international organisations. This shows how Japan behaves when it cannot get the support from enough Western countries. It turns to Africa because they are easy to bribe, and because other Asian nations usually do not want to support Japan politically because of resentment still felt about WWII. This is what it means when we say that "Japan is an economic giant, but a political dwarf".