B3 Kenta IDENOUE
I am Kenta Idenoue, a member of Fujii’s seminar in 2019. On 9th August 2019, I participated in the one-day internship of specialist personnel of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. This is because I am interested in work of the Ministry and hope to engage in multilateral diplomacy in the future. I would like to share my experience of the precious day.
It seems that about one-hundred people participated in the internship. The participants came from all over Japan. In the morning, we participants received explanations about the overview such as structure, concept and employment information of the Ministry. After lunch break, we did the diplomatic simulation. I was looking forward to this session because it was expected to give me a good opportunity to experience diplomacy practically. In this internship, the topic was Japan’s diplomacy of whaling. As Japan just withdrew from the International Whaling Commission (IWC) and started again commercial whaling last month, this topic was so current and suitable for my interest fortunately. Mainly, we discussed two points in a small group, future efforts of Japanese government toward countries concerned and strategic public diplomacy. After group discussion, each group gave a presentation in front of everyone. Our group suggested that Japan should restart commercial whaling under great management system. This strictness can solve the concerns of countries against whaling which full resumption of commercial whaling may exterminate the species of whale. Moreover, in the future, the management system may help other countries do well-managed whaling. It is considered that this contributes to enhance Japan’s presence in diplomacy of whaling. Needless to say, other groups also did sophisticated suggestions. Through this session, I learned a lot and got stimulated.
I spent good time in learning diplomacy with intelligent participants, especially the diplomatic simulation. As I am in charge of the team leader of IHL role play competition scheduled to be held next month, I try to use the experiences in this internship to grow. Finally, I would like to take this opportunity to express my appreciation to organizers of this internship.
