International Quarterly for Asian Studies

Eric Tagliacozzo: In Asian Waters: Oceanic Worlds from Yemen to Yokohama

Marco Zappa — 2024-06-27

Strategic Empowerment: Japan’s Evolving Policy toward Southeast Asia from the 2010s

Kei Koga — 2024-06-24

How has Japan developed its Southeast Asian strategy in the context of the intensifying US-China rivalry since the 2010s? This article argues that the rapidly changing strategic environment brought about by the assertive rise of China prompted Japan to adopt a new strategic vision that went beyond the traditional geographical focus on East Asia. Japan has gradually positioned Southeast Asia as one of the most important strategic theatres in the Indo-Pacific. Utilising its existing economic and diplomatic leverage in Southeast Asia, Japan has been pursuing various types of capacity-building strategies to empower Southeast Asian states and ASEAN to maintain regional autonomy, which the author calls “strategic empowerment”. While Japan has engaged in similar cooperative activities in the past, it has renewed its commitment through three main means: building a strategic partnership in Southeast Asia; promoting international rules, norms and values; and strengthening ASEAN-led institutions.

Japan’s Coast Guard Capacity Building under Abe Shinzō: Between Power, Money and Norms

Raymond Yamamoto — 2024-06-22

For Japan’s former prime minister Abe Shinzō, security cooperation with Southeast Asia was central to preventing the South China Sea from turning into a “Lake Beijing” – completely under Chinese control. This paper explains why Abe’s security engagement in the region focused mainly on providing Capacity Building Assistance (CBA) to Southeast Asian coast guards agencies to counter China’s maritime assertiveness. Answers are provided by looking at not only international but also domestic factors. Based on key variables of post–Cold War Japan’s foreign policy, namely the US-Japan alliance, the dominance of economic tools, and normative and institutional constraints on the use of force, the analysis concludes that CBA was an ideal response to the complex demands and restrictions of Japan’s security policy. In particular, the economic benefits of providing CBA are an important finding of the analysis and one that has not yet received much scholarly focus.

Reinforcing Trust, Evoking Nostalgia and Contrasting China: Japan’s Foreign Policy Repertoire and Identity Construction in Myanmar

Wrenn Yennie Lindgren — 2024-06-22

In the immediate aftermath of the military coup in Myanmar in February 2021, Western countries and the EU condemned the coup, imposed targeted sanctions against military leaders and military-owned companies, and redirected essential humanitarian aid to NGOs. Japan, however, chose to neither align with its democratic allies nor completely suspend its aid. Despite a long and complicated pre-war history and limited engagement after 1988, Japan-Myanmar relations experienced a resurgence between 2012 and 2021. This article contends that one key driving force in contemporary relations is identity construction. Drawing on the literature on relational identity and foreign policy repertoires, the article demonstrates how the discursive statements and embodied practices of a network of Japanese identity entrepreneurs activate, negotiate and renegotiate the identities of the Japanese Self and its Others. Through an analysis of interviews conducted with elite stakeholders in Myanmar and Japan, the article studies Japan’s constructed identity as an economic great power and post-war development pioneer, peace promoter and diplomatic mediator. It finds that Japan constructs its identity temporally in terms of nostalgia (natsukashisa) and a longing for a time when Japan was a post-war industrial powerhouse, but also spatially in terms of Japan’s legal, moral and industrial superiority over other countries involved in Myanmar’s development, in particular vis-à-vis China.

Negotiation of Strategic Distance: A Smart City Project with Japanese Official Development Assistance in Bang Sue, Thailand

Kie Sanada — 2024-06-27

The existing critical literature constructs Smart Cities (SC) as sites of technocratic governance, hidden within a socio-technically imagined utopian discourse that originated in the “Global North” but has already deeply penetrated the “Global South”. The substantial inflow of SC-related foreign investment into emerging Asian countries, such as Thailand, has motivated this paper to shed new light on the extensive nature of investment in the region. The authors have chosen to examine a SC project supported by Japanese Official Development Assistance in Bangkok’s Bang Sue district. This case study enables them to investigate the SC concept within the broader context of international politico-economic power struggles, particularly between Thailand and Japan in the realm of international cooperation. Using the concept of strategy, this study conceptualises the establishment of Smart Cities as each nation’s approach to advancing both national economic interests and international security. The examination of the policy history of SC conception in Thailand and Japan reveals diverse motivations behind these initiatives. Thailand seeks to shift its economic weight to the digital and knowledge sectors, while Japan targets economic and security enhancements in the Indo-Pacific region. Despite the common strategy of developing SC infrastructure in the Bang Sue area, the analysis identified nuanced differences in their goals. Further scrutiny of project documents revealed: 1) strategic distancing within the project, 2) technocratic traits within the project process, and 3) the role of socio-technical utopian discourse beyond ideology.

Mutual Transformations – Southeast Asia and Japan in the 21st Century

Marco Zappa — 2024-06-17

This special issue examines the complex and evolving relations between Japan and Southeast Asia. Historically rich in resources, Southeast Asia attracted imperial powers, including Japan, significantly transforming the region. Post-war ecosystems were influenced by Japanese occupation during WWII, shaping leaders and industrial development. Japanese investments and Official Development Assistance (ODA) since the 1960s have facilitated regional growth. Despite Japan's cautious diplomacy due to its US alliance, it diversified support in the 1990s, including infrastructure, legal, and political aid to transitional economies like Vietnam. Japan remains a significant investor, expanding aid to address climate change and maintaining trust in ASEAN countries. Recent geopolitical shifts, including China’s rise and US-China competition, have pushed Southeast Asia to strengthen ties with both powers, positioning Japan’s evolving role as crucial for regional security and development. The issue includes analyses of Japan’s strategic empowerment of Southeast Asia, capacity building, nostalgia in foreign policy, and smart technologies in urban planning, illustrating broader trends and reducing historical asymmetries.