Routledge Contemporary Japan Series. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2017 [2008]. 134 pp. (Illustrations.) US$149.95, cloth. ISBN 978-1-138-10372-6.
Despite its ambitious and broad English title, Japan’s Quest for Stability in Southeast Asia disappoints in its limited coverage of post-1945 Japan-Southeast Asia relations. First published in 2008 by Chikuma Shobō as ‘Kaiyō kokka’ nihon no sengo-shi, the short book mostly focuses on Japan’s relations with Indonesia. It begins with the 1955 Bandung Conference and ends with the 1978 Fukuda Doctrine, when Japan committed itself to contributing to the peace and prosperity of Southeast Asia. During the past few decades, many developments have occurred in Japan-Southeast Asia relations, including the Japan-Myanmar rapprochement, the development of economic corridors in the Greater Mekong subregion, and Prime Minister Abe’s efforts to build a maritime alliance with Southeast Asian countries on their territorial claims vis-à-vis China. Readers will not be made aware of any of these. On his English webpage, Miyagi translates the Japanese title as “Post-war Japan as a ‘Maritime Nation,’” which more closely represents the original Japanese title. As is the unfortunate case regarding studies of Japan-Southeast Asia relations, a scholarly work that masterfully covers Japanese postwar relations with all Southeast Asian countries has yet to be written by a single author.
Miyagi combines his previous research on the Bandung Conference and Southeast Asian decolonization and development between 1957 and 1966 to construct a comprehensive diplomatic history of Japan-Southeast Asia relations. For him, Japan’s relationship building in Asia began in Southeast Asia with war reparation payments and economic advances during the early Cold War. Because many Southeast Asian countries had not signed the 1952 San Francisco Peace Treaty, postwar settlements with Japan had been left to bilateral negotiations. During the 1950s, substantial bilateral negotiations on war reparations took place with Burma (1954), the Philippines (1956), Indonesia (1958), and South Vietnam (1959). Meanwhile, Cambodia and Laos received grant aid rather than reparations. From these negotiations, Japan had arranged to pay reparations to these countries not in the form of cash payments but in services (e.g., provisions of goods, construction of facilities) from Japanese companies. While reparations led to a normalization of relations, a large portion of these reparations would return to Japan through Japanese companies that had won government orders and contracts. By doing so, the Japanese government provided inroads for its companies to (re)enter the Southeast Asian markets under relatively low risk, with guaranteed payment from the government. Essentially, Miyagi writes, “the reparations issue was viewed as a means of advancing into Southeast Asia, rather than as atonement for its wartime deeds” (30).
Miyagi views the 1955 Bandung Conference, attended by 29 Asian and African nations, most newly independent, to be significant for Japan’s reentry into Southeast Asia as a leading anti-communist player (in the absence of Western powers). Miyagi details how India, Indonesia, and Burma had invited Japan to the conference in order to provide a counterweight to China. Conference participants proudly rejected colonial rule and endorsed mutual solidarity through economic cooperation and cultural exchanges. As such, Indonesia played an important role in Japan’s southward advance into Maritime Southeast Asia during decolonization and the Cold War when the Dutch and the British reluctantly exited the region.
The year 1965 marked another turning point in Southeast Asia with the “September 30th Movement” (failed coup) in Indonesia and the US military escalation in Vietnam. Miyagi argues that as Asia became a bipolarized region divided between communist (pro-decolonization) and anti-communist (pro-US) countries, Japan was able to further expand its economic horizon in Asia. Subsequently, Japanese foreign direct investment and official development aid poured into Indonesia. For Miyagi, the 1971 rapprochement between the US and China effectively ended the Asian Cold War, as the US experienced fatigue from the Vietnam War and China gave up its quest for revolution. After the rapprochement, Japan immediately rushed to normalize diplomatic relations with China. This action irked President Suharto, whose legitimacy rested on his anti-communist stance (and antagonism toward China).
Overall, I cannot recommend the book for serious scholars of Japan-Southeast Asian diplomatic history. Scholars will be frustrated by a lack of nuance/context in many of his statements and, in particular, a consistent absence of proper citation. For example, he states: “According to the US vision, Japan was to achieve economic recovery by combining its industrial capabilities with the material resources of Southeast Asia, which would simultaneously resolve the shortage of goods in the region and eliminate the social insecurity that had encouraged the spread of Communism” (28). In another example, he writes: “It is indeed an established fact that even after Suharto seized power, China continued its attempts to intervene in Indonesian politics through the country’s ethnic Chinese who were affiliated with the former Communist Party” (106). Miyagi makes no attempts to provide specific sources but, in the “Afterwards,” directs the readers to consult his previously published academic works for proper citations. In The Killing Season (Princeton, 2018, 185–188) by contrast, Geoffrey Robinson expertly provides a more nuanced picture with credible sources of China’s strong criticism of the Indonesian campaign of violence against the Left after certain Indonesians turned against Chinese institutions and individuals. China had sent ships to Indonesian port cities to pick up Chinese Indonesians seeking to flee and provided them a place of refuge. In 1967, the two countries eventually severed diplomatic relations. Such two-dimensional context would have been helpful for readers to better understand and appreciate Miyagi’s more important point that “the threat China posed to Suharto’s Indonesia was of a different nature from conventional international issues” (106).
To be fair, Miyagi aimed the original version of this book to educate Japanese general audiences rather than to introduce new material or contribute new perspectives for specialists. The Japanese version came out as a handy paperback (bunkobon) from one of many publishers that produce compact and inexpensive books for a well-read Japanese public, who are often curious on various intellectual topics and prefer books that they can finish in five or six hours. At 1,100 yen (US$10), the Japanese version clearly serves that purpose. But at US$150 (or US$1/page) for an English translation with a deceptively broad title and limited coverage? Well, you decide.
Apichai W. Shipper
Georgetown University, Washington, DC, USA