It is a great honour to write the foreword to Ambassador Horinouchi’s book, which makes important contributions to international law.

I have known Ambassador Horinouchi for more than twenty years. When we first met, he was the Director of International Agreements in the Treaties Bureau of the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and I was a professor of international law at the University of Tokyo. He took the excellent initiative to organise a group of Japanese scholars to study WTO cases, and I agreed to be its chair. The group had several successful meetings discussing and analysing international legal issues raised in WTO cases.

Ambassador Horinouchi graduated from the Faculty of Law of the University of Tokyo and entered the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1980. In the Ministry, he has held a number of key posts dealing with international legal affairs, including the Director of International Agreements, the Director of International Legal Affairs, and the Deputy Legal Advisor. He is thus a well-known specialist in international law in the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs. In addition to the posts indicated above, he has served, among others, as the Minister Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to China, the Consul General in Los Angeles, the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Cambodia, and the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary to the Netherlands. He is fluent in English and Chinese. Besides his regular duties for the Ministry, he has been very active in teaching international law to young people. He has held teaching positions at Waseda University, among others.

As a specialist in international law in the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ambassador Horinouchi has dealt with a number of international legal issues concerning Japan. This book is a collection of articles on selected international legal issues. Written in his personal capacity, the book does not necessarily represent his government’s view. The book addresses various issues, including self-defence, post-war legal issues, chemical weapons, the law of the sea, consular immunities, and hijacking . Ambassador Horinouchi analyses these issues from a practical point of view. He is a prominent practitioner, as well as a scholar, of international law. 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.