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

Abstract

Reviewed by: Japan's Quest for Stability in Southeast Asia: Navigating the Turning Points in Postwar Asia by Miyagi Taizō Anno Tadashi Japan's Quest for Stability in Southeast Asia: Navigating the Turning Points in Postwar Asia. By Miyagi Taizō. Translated by Hanabusa Midori. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2018. 134 pages. Hardcover, £115.00/ $149.95. Carl Schmitt (1888–1985), the most trenchant critic of liberalism in the twentieth century, argued in the early 1930s that the right of belligerency is an essential feature of any state and wrote prophetically that "if a people no longer possesses … the will to maintain itself in the sphere of politics [i.e. if it is no longer willing to decide on and fight its enemy], the latter [politics] will not thereby vanish from the world. Only a weak people will disappear."1 Postwar Japan's foreign policy and scholarly interpretations of it have evolved under the shadow of what might be called "Schmitt's curse"—the thesis that when a state renounces the use of force it is thereby reduced to a nonentity, politically speaking. In line with Schmitt's thesis that politics is about the distinction between friend and enemy, the history of international relations in postwar Asia has usually been told focusing on the ebb and flow of the Cold War and on changes in patterns of alignment among the great powers. Events such as the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Sino-American rapprochement have marked its major turning points. Within this context, Japan's foreign policy has most often been depicted as following the Yoshida Doctrine, i.e., keeping a low profile militarily and politically while concentrating on the pursuit of pragmatic economic interests. Having renounced war, the use of force, and the right of belligerency in its constitution, Japan was seen as having little if any influence on the political framework that defined its own international environment. Despite its slimness and unassuming title, Miyagi Taizō's Japan's Quest for Stability in Southeast Asia is an ambitious book that seeks to challenge the entrenched view of postwar Japanese foreign policy as reactive, focused on economic interests, and devoid of vision. Miyagi argues that the main story of postwar Asia was not the Cold War and its aftermath, but the transition from decolonization to development, and that this transition was facilitated in part by Japan's long-term pursuit of the "depoliticization of Asia." The broad interpretive claim of the book rests on an analysis of the political history of Southeast Asia and Japan's policy toward the region (particularly toward Indonesia) between 1955 and the mid-1970s. Before the publication of the original, Japanese edition of the book in 2008, the author had published two monographs on postwar Japan's Asia policy, the second of which was awarded the prestigious Suntory Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities as well as the Nakasone Yasuhiro Award.2 In the book under review, which is intended for a broader audience, Miyagi builds on the results of previous research and reflects on the meaning of postwar Japan's Asia policy. The book is consequently heavier on interpretations and lighter on detailed historical [End Page 136] narratives, but the author's account is surefooted, and endnotes added for the English edition will direct interested readers to the relevant sources. One of the book's many strengths is that it takes a consistently multifaceted view, which allows the author to shed light upon his object of study from multiple angles. Below, I summarize highlights of the book's argument. Miyagi relates that Japan, having recovered its sovereignty in 1952, made its debut on postwar Asia's diplomatic scene at the Bandung Conference of 1955, which was dominated by an outpouring of anticolonial sentiment. Invited to Indonesia, Japan faced the choice of either siding with Asian states for the purpose of gaining acceptance in Asia or following the policy of the US, whose main concern was to prevent the passion of anticolonialism from pushing the new nations into the Communist camp. Japan avoided the dilemma by focusing on proposals for economic cooperation in Asia. Unlike the US, Japan did not—or preferred not to—see...