THE INSPIRATIONS OF JAPANESE NATIONAL SPACE LEGISLATIONS' EXPERIENCE TO THE OTHER ASIAN SPACE-FARING STATES AND ITS EFFECT TO THE SPACE COOPERATION IN THIS REGION

摘要

On the one hand, national space legislation can regulate space activities of a country, including the development of a space industry. On the other hand, it can promote space cooperation with other countries. As the fourth nation that joined the "Space Club" in 1970, Japan's space legislation provides a valuable example for other space-faring countries in Asia. Furthermore, if the other Asian space-faring countries follow Japan's trajectory, the future of space cooperation in Asia will be much smoother. The following two reasons explain this view: Firstly, the Japanese 2008 Basic Space Law (BSL) is not a single Act, rather it establishes a complete and sophisticated system which is consists of further legislation, namely the 2009 "Basic Plan for Space Policy (BSP)" and the "Space Activities Act (SAA)" which is still in the making. Secondly, if the Asian countries were able to agree on a "Model National Space Law", taking Japan's space legislation as reference, the problems that the European Space Agency (ESA) encountered in Europe due to differences in implementation, could possibly be avoided in Asia. In this paper, initially, I intend to describe the delicate design of Japanese national space legislation and the mechanism of this system in order to identify the features that should ideally be adopted by all other Asian countries, especially by the space-faring countries. Then, I will focus on the creation of the "Model National Space Law". As national legislation is generally based on national interests and conditions, it is not easy to achieve agreement among different states on one "model law". In other words, although a common model law is highly desirable in principle, it is a very difficult task to accomplish that all countries agree on its content. So in the process of its creation, compromises need to be made. I consider it my task in this section to identify possible areas where compromises seem achievable.