Author: Joel Rathus, Meiji and Adelaide Universities

Much has been made of late about the possibility of Japan drawing closer to China. But on the major issues of historical record, trade, and security, Japan’s China policy is unchanged under the DPJ, and is unlikely to change in the near future.

Firstly, on the question of history, Hatoyama is unlikely to make major changes. According to the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Hatoyama has no plans to visit Nanjing this year, and as far as MOFA is aware there is no plan for an apology of any form. Indeed, after rumors broke that there might be a ‘Hatoyama to Nanjing, Hu to Hiroshima’ swap this year, the only country not to check-in with MOFA’s China desk about the truth of these rumours was China itself. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Joel Rathus, Adelaide University and Meiji University

This month’s issue of Voice, conducted a public poll looking, among other things, at Japan’s China policy. Polling on three questions in particular are interesting for what they say about the bipolar character of Japanese feelings about dealings with China. The polls reveal that Japanese want a friendly relationship with China. They also accord a prominent place in the national psyche for the Yasukuni Shrine without a hint of contradiction.

In response to the question, ‘Do you agree with the new Administration’s China policy; East Asian community, and East Sea Joint Development etc.’, half of the respondents said they agreed while 35 per cent disagreed. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Joel Rathus

Japanese Prime Minister Hatoyama has now had several opportunities to put forward his view on a Free Trade Area in East Asia. Thus far his ‘vision’ has proven to be more dependent on the audience, rather than economic or strategic factors. This can be seen in his approaches towards the CJK-FTA, or China-Japan-Korea trilateral FTA as it is also known, and also the larger issue of US participation in the East Asia Community (or East Asian FTA project).

Firstly, with regard to the CJK-FTA, Hatoyama proposed at the October 10 Beijing Trilateral meeting that such an FTA be accelerated. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Joel Rathus, Adelaide University and Meiji University

As Michael Cucek wrote last week, Japan has witnessed the subdued brutality of the Democratic Party of Japan’s (DPJ) Government Revitalisation Unit (GRU) taking back 1.4 trillion Yen from various extremely unhappy NGOs and bureaucrats. This process of creative destruction is rarely seen in Japan, and while comparisons to the Meiji Restoration by some DPJ politicians are exaggerations, the fact is that Japan is witnessing a real shake up in power distribution. And as in any such shake up, there are winners and losers.

In this case the winners are the DPJ over the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and the Ministry of Finance over the other Ministries. Let me talk about the DPJ first. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Joel Rathus, Adelaide University and Meiji University

At the fourth East Asian Summit, held on 25 October in Thailand, the leaders of Japan and Australia had the opportunity to air their ideas about the future form and function of East Asian regionalism.

As Acharya notes Australian PM Rudd and Japanese PM Hatoyama appear to have competing visions about how to re-order the region. But, at this stage, if only because both proposals share a level of deliberately in-built vagueness, it’s not easy to tell. Hatoyama, for example, seems ambivalent – or at least unsure – on what role the US ought to play in the region. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Joel Rathus

Last week the Mainichi reported on results of public polling. It found that the Japanese public still overwhelming support (72 per cent) Hatoyama’s government. While dipping somewhat from his highest approval rating (77 per cent) immediately after forming government one month ago, this is still surprisingly good. The previous three prime ministers each lost 10 per cent in their first month, as did the more historically similar Hosokawa Administration of the mid-nineties.

The honeymoon is clearly still on, but there are some reasons to think that it will last awhile yet. Firstly, Japanese expectations are not very high. Secondly, Hatoyama is proving himself more media savvy than expected. Thirdly, the administration is actually pushing ahead with policy. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Joel Rathus, Adelaide

Just three days after coming to power, Hatoyama and Kan Naoto (Vice-PM) opened the National Strategy Office (NSO). One of the DPJ’s policy pledges had been the creation of such an Office, to provide an overarching ‘vision for Japan’ and policy coordination across departments.

Although the terms of reference have since changed, and will likely change again, the NSO is potentially a major innovation in how Japanese politics is conducted. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Joel Rathus

Beijing, October 10, the heads of Japan, China and South Korea met at the Trilateral Summit.

Ten years since the first such meeting was held, established on sidelines of the ASEAN+3 as an informal breakfast, the summit has come a long way. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Joel Rathus

In 2006, the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB) President Haruhiko Kuroda announced a new ‘regional’ platform in the Bank’s development strategy.

The Regional Cooperation and Integration Strategy (RCI) is now three years old. It is time to reflect on the problems it has confronted and to examine how it might fare from here on.

Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Joel Rathus

Examining the reports and minutes from the ASEAN Regional Forum’s Inter-Sessional Group on Confidence Building and Preventative Diplomacy (ISG-CBMs) doesn’t exactly instil much confidence in the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF). This group is the litmus test of mutual trust in East Asia. More than that, it is a window into the thinking of the member states on the prospect of regional inter-state violence, up to and including, war.

While East Asia’s recent moves towards more and deeper regionalism, driven in part by uneasiness inspired by the Bush administration’s unilateralism and inattention to the region, would suggest a greater level of trust between the regional countries, the results of the ISG-CBMs are less than inspiring. Indeed, on reading what was being claimed as a CBM, one could be forgiven for losing some confidence that Asia could learn from Europe and find its way to a true peace predicated on trust rather than a cold peace based on the US hegemonic stabilizer and functional elite relations overlying popular fear and mistrust.

Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Joel Rathus, Adelaide University

In recent days both the Liberal-Democratic Party (LDP) and the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), in addition to trading barbs, have released their respective ‘manifestos’, or policy platforms. Unsurprisingly, the focus in these documents is on domestic political matters almost exclusively with the pension system again taking centre stage.

Despite the preoccupation with internal affairs, Japan will not be able to shut out events in the outside world. The global financial crisis will propel the new government headlong into international affairs, ready or not.

It is increasingly likely that the DPJ will win this election.  What are the DPJ’s views on Japan’s role in the international economy?

A central question is whether Japan will throw its weight behind the effort to de-throne the US dollar’s global role. It is worth remembering that in 1999, in the aftermath of the Asian financial crisis, the then PM Obuchi proposed ‘yen internationalisation’ as a means of achieving exactly this. Japan’s intentions are still important because unlike China – the current ‘leader’ (or at least the most vocal member) of the putative movement to replace the dollar, the Japanese yen has the greater ability to replace to some extent the dollar’s role, at least within East Asia.

Read the rest of this entry »

Guest Author: Joel Rathus, Adelaide University

On the 3rd of May, the ASEAN + 3 Finance Minister’s Meeting (APT-FMM) met in Bali. Expectations were high that, at last, an agreement might be reached on the multilateralization of the Chiang Mai Initiatives, or CMIM. An agreement, were it reached, would allow the members of the CMI to tap a regional pool of Foreign Exchange Reserves to better fend off a financial crisis.

Yet, ever since the agreement to proceed with multilateralization was reached at the 2005 Hyderabad Conference, the CMIM has faced difficulty in reaching a decision about contribution levels. This problem was political; boiling down a simple question of whether China would succeed in persuading Japan to accept an ‘equal firsts’ solution, or whether Japan would succeed in making its case that it should to be the largest single contributor.

Read the rest of this entry »