Japan's Quest for Stability in Southeast Asia: Navigating the Turning Points in Postwar Asia

Author(s): Taizo Miyagi

Translated by: Midori Hanabusa

ISBN: 9781138103726

Publisher: Routledge

Year: 2018

Reviewed by Boštjan Bertalanič, Associate Professor, Josai University, Japan.

Japan’s postwar foreign policy has revolved along at least three orbits that, over the past seven decades, have determined its major foreign policy trajectories. The first orbit is the UN-centered international institutionalism, which was instrumental in bringing Japan back into the international community and rehabilitating its international status along the values and principles stated in the UN charter. The second orbit is the US–Japan security alliance, which positioned Japan firmly in the US-led liberal-capitalist system, allowing the nation to gradually emerge from the system’s semi-periphery and establish itself as one of the new centers of the globalized world economy. The third orbit is positioned between the first two and is represented by Japan’s own version of Asian regionalism (or East Asianism) based on the ideology of developmentalism. Miyagi's book 'Japan's quest for stability in Southeast Asia' focuses on the historical coordinates of this last orbit, and in many respects, attempts to reframe established narratives about Japan's Cold War foreign policy in East Asia. It does so by painting the country as more independent and proactive. Mainstream discourses on the nature of Japan's postwar foreign policy have often depicted it as an abnormal, passive-reactive state predominately concerned with its foreign economic policy and strategically chained to a semi-clientelist, asymmetric relationship with the US (Calder 1988). In more recent scholarship, however, this discourse of Japan’s Cold War political passivity has been juxtaposed with a newer brand of the country’s foreign policy activism which argues for a politically more present Japan, especially in the post-Cold War and post-9/11 international system (Funabashi and Ikenberry 2020). Miyagi's book can be classified as complementing this more recent and second type of literature on the rebirth of Japan’s foreign policy activism. Miyagi proposes that Japan’s postwar activism, when contextualized in the regional framework of the decolonization of Asia, can be observed on a much more expansive historical horizon reaching back to the late 1950s and mid-1960s. He develops his narrative over five chapters, which are introduced with a brief prologue and conclude with an epilogue summarizing the volume’s central points. 

In the first chapter, Miyagi describes how Japan, after its defeat and occupation by the US, managed to reenter Asian regional politics by the end of the 1950s. According to Miyagi, the opportunity to ‘return back to Asia’ presented itself with the unexpected invitation (call) to Japan to participate in the Afro-Asian Conference (the Bandung conference) in 1955. This was the first international conference attended by Japan after the end of the war and led to the first face-to-face meeting between Japan and China. Japan was here represented by a businessman-bureaucrat politician Tatsunosuke Takasaki who was the first head of the Economic Planning Agency at the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI). At this point, we learn that sending Takasaki to Bandung was a compromise that initiated the advancement of Japan’s economic interests in Southeast Asia. It also sent a message to the US that Japan’s engagement with Asian politics and the nonalignment movement was based on economic considerations and would not impact the primacy of the US–Japan political relationship. According to Miyagi, at this point in history, “Japan’s basic idea was to revitalize the Asian economy through a vertical division of labor by connecting Japanese industrial products with Asian resources” (p. 24). Japan would steer clear of ideological cleavages and use politics solely to advance its economic interests. There was, however, one issue that needed to be addressed first—the war reparations.

In Chapter Two, Miyagi points out that the San Francisco peace settlement did not repair Japan’s relations with Asia, and the (non)resolution of the reparations issue was a major obstacle to Japanese economic advancement into Southeast Asia. While the negotiations on reparations were not easy, they were nevertheless successfully concluded by end of the 1950s in a manner supportive for the rehabilitation and strengthening of Japan’s economic presence in Asia. The reparations eventually led to the normalization of relations and took the form of products and services. In this scheme, Japanese companies received direct payments from the government to export their products and undertake construction projects in the countries receiving Japanese reparations (p. 30–31). Although reparations were clearly linked to Japan’s economic advancement in Asia, Miyagi emphasizes that the political aspect of the reparations was as important as the economic one. Reparations paved the way for Japan’s reentry into Asian postwar politics such that it became part of the new political and economic dynamism in Southeast Asia.

Chapter Three describes these early stages of Japanese economic expansionism and political engagement with Asian post-colonial politics by closely focusing on Indonesia. Miyagi labels this phase as Japan’s “southward advance”, alluding to the more vigorous penetration and expansion of Japanese business interests into Southeast Asia. By this time, Japan was experiencing substantial economic growth, and there was a growing need to find and establish overseas markets for Japanese products (p. 39). According to Miyagi, Indonesia with its dominant role in Southeast Asia as well as ample natural resources was high priority for Japan’s foreign economic policy. Due to close ties with the Indonesian leadership, which had developed during the war, this proved to be also a well-calculated and strategic move. After concluding the war reparations talks in 1957, Japan began investing in Indonesia and building stronger relations with the Sukarno regime, which had cooperated with Japanese military rulers during the war. Following Miyagi’s argument, this was significant for both parties. Sukarno could rely on Japanese support and investments in his anti-colonial standoff with the Dutch economic interests in Indonesia. Japan, on the other hand, was presented with an opportunity to step in and replace the Dutch economic clout in the region (p. 47).

Chapter Four describes Japan’s foreign policy changes in relation with the post-Sukarno military regime (under Suharto). Miyagi describes the attempted coup of 1965, which eventually led to the demise of Sukarno and changed the political tides of Indonesia, as a turning point in the wider regional context that influenced the future development of Asia (p. 77). This was the first tectonic movement that signaled the shift from decolonization toward a faster economic growth and development of Asia; economic pragmatism prevailed. Japan’s close ties with Sukarno were discounted to accommodate corporate demands and business interests to maintain stable economic and trade relations with Indonesia (p. 87). There was also considerable pressure from the West to distance Indonesia from China and diminish the communist influence in the country. In this context, Japanese business interests and economic diplomacy again played a role in siding with the new military regime. Miyagi explains, (p.86)“ […] supporting the army’s assent to power would provide Japan with the advantage of securing its economic interests, and, proceeding from there, solidifying its base for the future expansion of the economic relationship between the two countries.”

In Chapter Five, the book introduces us to the second tectonic shock that, according to Miyagi, fixed the coordinates of the Asian regional development over the next decades and set the course for the return of Japanese economic interests to China. In this chapter, we learn that the US–China reconciliation that followed the Nixon shock was received by Japan as an opportunity and seized by the government with open hands. Moreover, at this point the ‘southward advance’ was about to change course, and Indonesia was not happy about it. For instance, we learn that Suharto attempted to persuade the Japanese government to reconsider its rapprochement plans with China (p.103–107). Although his diplomatic offensive eventually failed and Japan went ahead with normalizing its relations with China, Japan nevertheless revealed disunity among the country’s political leadership regarding China. We learn that Japan’s Asian regionalism has been rooted in two competing lines of thought—the Tanaka (pro-China) view and the Fukuda (pro-Southeast Asia) view (p. 114–116).

The book then concludes by restating the central points of the argument in the epilogue. First, solving the war reparations issue with Asian nations paved the way for Japan to reenter Asian politics in the 1950s, and preparatory steps for this had been laid down during the Bandung conference. Second, domestic politics was instrumental and supported economic expansionism through Asia, first toward Southeast Asia by anchoring Japan in Indonesia and later toward Northeast Asia by opening to China. Third, according to Miyagi, Japan’ s contribution to the rapid economic development in East Asia was aided by its relentless drive to depoliticize Asia. In his own words,

“Japan believed that neither revolutions and pursuit of reform through class struggle nor the Cold War attempts to contain them could make the future brighter for Asia […]. Rather, it was down-to-earth nation-building efforts and the resultant economic development that would lead to a brighter future. This was the vision of the world held by Japan which had committed its own future to economic development” (p.119 - 120).

Miyagi concludes that Japan was successful at depoliticizing Asia and that the underlying political–economic divisions have thus been contained. He again emphasizes that “Japan’s economic assistance and investment played a significant role in making the transformation irreversible” (p. 122). However, to maintain the current situation, he also suggests the need for keeping the US military presence in Asia unchanged, advancing with the economic integration of Asia which includes China, and further proceeding with the democratization of the entire region (p.123–124).

A careful and critical reader will probably question some of the book’s major conclusions. Particularly, the supposed success of Japan’s depoliticization of Asia in the 1960s and 1970s, which according to the author stimulated Asian economic rebirth, seems to be based on a naive assumption that from the 1970s on ideology vanished from Asia. Leaving aside the ambiguity of what depoliticization means, and if it is even viable, one can counterargue that instead of disappearing from Asia, one ideology—that is, developmentalism—simply prevailed and became the dominant (hegemonic) ideology in East Asia. Furthermore, the effort to push Japan to the center stage by using Arthurian notions of a ‘questing’ redeemer of Asia has a mythologizing effect and could be interpreted as an ideological move.

Overall, the chapters analyzing the evolution of Japan’s postwar relations with Indonesia are of significant value as they offer insights into the intricate ties between postwar Japanese domestic politics and the Sukarno regime. For instance, we get an intimate glimpse of the continuity of the Japanese imperial legacy that served its postwar foreign economic policy in East Asia. Despite its theoretical weaknesses, this short volume still makes a welcome contribution to the general literature on the nature of Japan’s foreign policy in Asia during the Cold War. It is based on an extensive analysis of primary sources and declassified diplomatic records from Australia, UK, Japan, and US. therefore, it should be of considerable interest to those (specialists and non-specialists) who wish to better comprehend Japan during the early stages of its postwar international rehabilitation.

References:

Calder, Kent E. 1988. “Japanese Foreign Economic Policy Formation: Explaining the Reactive State.” World Politics 40 (4): 517–41. https://doi.org/10.2307/2010317.

Funabashi, Yoichi, and G John Ikenberry. 2020. The Crisis of Liberal Internationalism: Japan and the World Order. Edited by Yoichi Funabashi and G John Ikenberry. Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press. https://doi.org/10.7864/j.ctvbnm3nv.