The paper conceptualises discourse legitimization strategies and applies them to Japan's multilateral policy. It comprises own typology of multilateralism based on IR theory (instrumental (rationalist, 1), moral (idealist, 2), social (constructivist, 3)) and Theo Van Leeuwen's discourse legitimization (rationalization (1), evaluation, abstraction (2), authorization, mythopoesis (3)) in order to discover how Japan legitimized it's new multilateralism incentive after the end of Cold War. To do so, it applies the typology on Japan's primary discourse on two institutions - APEC and ARF at the time of their inception and on Japan's reflection of them. By doing so, the paper discovers, what values were dominant in Japanese institutional thinking and how Japan discursively created the necessity for post CW multilateralism.
