Japan's regional geoeconomic strategy -- Foreign economic policy, domestic institutions and regional governance -- Geoeconomics of the Asia-Pacific -- Transformation in the Japanese political economy -- Trade and investment : a gradual path -- Money and finance : an uneven path -- Development and foreign aid : a hybrid path.
Japanese Studies has provided a fertile space for non-Eurocentric analysis for a number of reasons. It has been embroiled in the long-running internal debate over the so-called Nihonjinron, revolving around the extent to which the effective interpretation of Japanese society and culture requires non-Western, Japan-specific emic concepts and theories. This book takes this question further and explores how we can understand Japanese society and culture by combining Euro-American concepts and theories with those that originate in Japan. Because Japan is the only liberal democracy to have achieved a high level of capitalism outside the Western cultural framework, Japanese Studies has long provided a forum for deliberations about the extent to which the Western conception of modernity is universally applicable. Furthermore, because of Japan’s military, economic and cultural dominance in Asia at different points in the last century, Japanese Studies has had to deal with the issues of Japanocentrism as well as Eurocentrism, a duality requiring complex and nuanced analysis. This book identifies variations amongst Japanese Studies academic communities in the Asia-Pacific and examines the extent to which relatively autonomous scholarship, intellectual approach or theories exist in the region. It also evaluates how studies on Japan in the region contribute to global Japanese Studies and explores their potential for formulating concrete strategies to unsettle Eurocentric dominance of the discipline.
As Japan's newfound economic power leads to increased political power, there is concern that Japan may be turning East Asia into a regional economic bloc to rival the U.S. and Europe. In Regionalism and Rivalry, leading economists and political scientists address this concern by looking at three central questions: Is Japan forming a trading bloc in Pacific Asia? Does Japan use foreign direct investment in Southeast Asia to achieve national goals? Does Japan possess the leadership qualities necessary for a nation assuming greater political responsibility in international affairs? The authors contend that although intraregional trade in East Asia is growing rapidly, a trade bloc is not necessarily forming. They show that the trade increase can be explained entirely by factors independent of discriminatory trading arrangements, such as the rapid growth of East Asian economies. Other chapters look in detail at cases of Japanese direct investment in Southeast Asia and find little evidence of attempts by Japan to use the power of its multinational corporations for political purposes. A third group of papers attempt to gauge Japan's leadership characteristics. They focus on Japan's "technology ideology," its contributions to international public goods, international monetary cooperation, and economic liberalization in East Asia.
This wide-ranging collection seeks to reassess conventional understanding of Japan’s Asia-Pacific War by defamiliarizing and expanding the rhetorical narrative. Its nine chapters, diverse in theme and method, are united in their goal to recover a measured historicity about the conflict by either introducing new areas of knowledge or reinterpreting existing ones. Collectively, they cast doubt on the war as familiar and recognizable, compelling readers to view it with fresh eyes. Following an introduction that problematizes timeworn narratives about a “unified Japan” and its “illegal war” or “race war,” early chapters on the destruction of Japan’s diplomatic records and government interest in an egalitarian health care policy before, during, and after the war oblige us to question selective histories and moral judgments about wartime Japan. The discussion then turns to artistic/cultural production and self-determination, specifically to Osaka rakugo performers who used comedy to contend with state oppression and to the role of women in creating care packages for soldiers abroad. Other chapters cast doubt on well-trod stereotypes (Japan’s lack of pragmatism in its diplomatic relations with neutral nations and its irrational and fatalistic military leadership) and examine resistance to the war by a prominent Japanese Christian intellectual. The volume concludes with two nuanced responses to race in wartime Japan, one maintaining the importance of racial categories while recognizing the “performance of Japaneseness,” the other observing that communities often reflected official government policies through nationality rather than race. Contrasting findings like these underscore the need to ask new questions and fill old gaps in our understanding of a historical event that, after more than seventy years, remains as provocative and divisive as ever. Defamiliarizing Japan’s Asia-Pacific War will find a ready audience among World War II historians as well as specialists in war and society, social history, and the growing fields of material culture and civic history.
This collection of scholarly papers examines the influence of Japanese dominance on the politics, economies, and cultures of Southeast Asia. A major question probed is whether Japan has now attained, through economic power, the predominance it once sought through military means. Japan's hegemonic system is not the first to work over the area--before it were those from China, from Britain, from the United States. This collection's comparative perspective acknowledges the distinctiveness of Asian regionalism and Japan's changing role with it. As the subtitle of this book indicates, it is concerned with Japan and Asia and not with Japan in Asia, thus suggesting a complex and at the same time problematical regional identity for Japan.
This book brings together a unique team of academics and practitioners to analyse interests, institutions, and issues affecting and affected by the transition from Asia-Pacific to Indo-Pacific. The Indo-Pacific has emerged as the world’s economic and strategic centre of gravity, in which established and rising powers compete with each other. As a strategic space, the Indo-Pacific reflects the rise of geo-political and geo-economic designs and dynamics which have come to shape the region in the early twenty-first century. These new dynamics contrast with the (neo-)liberal ideas and the seemingly increasing globalisation for which the once dominant ‘Asia-Pacific’ regional label stood.
The prospect of a new, rapidly rising China poses both opportunities and challenges for regional community building in Asia Pacific. In this book, intellectual leaders from the region present their perspectives on China's development. Four chapters by Chinese authors analyze the domestic dynamics related to the country's political and economic development as well as its external economic and political/security relationships. Contributors from Japan, Korea, member-countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and Australia/New Zealand cover the growing political influence of China in the region, its influence on security in the region, and the implications of China's continuing economic growth. Five final chapters examine China's regional strategy toward Asia Pacific, Japan-China cooperation on regional community building, taking a greater role in regional security arrangements and the regional economic order, and the cultural implications for the region of the rise of China. Contributors include Yang Guangbin (Renmin University, Japan), Men Honghua (Central Party School, China), Wang Rongjun (Chinese Academy of Social Science), Ni Feng (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences), Takahara Akio (Rikkyo University, Japan), Ohashi Hideo (Senshu University, Japan), Lee Geun, (Seoul National University, Korea), Jwa Sung-Hee (Korea Economic Research Institute), Morada Noel (Institute for Strategic and Development Studies, Philippines), Mari Pangestu (former executive director, Center for Strategic and International Studies), Greg Austin, (European Institute for Asian Studies, Brussels, and Australian National University), Jusuf Wanandi (Center for Strategic and International Studies, Indonesia), Chia Siow Yue (Singapore Institute of International Affairs and EADN), and Wang Gungwu, (East Asian Institute, Singapore).