Japan's Relations with Southeast Asia

The Fukuda Doctrine and Beyond

Peng Er Lam

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• eBook ISBN: 9781136235818
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Politics
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The Fukuda Doctrine has been the official blueprint to Japan's foreign policy towards Southeast Asia since 1977. This book examines the Fukuda Doctrine in the context of Japan-Southeast Asia relations, and discusses the possibility of a non-realist approach in the imagining and conduct of international relations in East Asia.

The collapse of 54 years of Liberal Democratic Party rule and the advent of a new Democratic Party of Japan raises the question of whether the Fukuda Doctrine is still relevant as a framework to analyse Tokyo's policy and behaviour towards Southeast Asia. Looking at its origins and norms amidst three decades of change, the book argues that the Fukuda Doctrine is still relevant to Japan-Southeast Asian relations, and should be extended to relations between China and Japan if an East Asian Community is to be built. The book goes on to discuss the Fukuda Doctrine in relation to the power shift in Asia, including the revitalization of Japan's security role.

By providing a detailed understanding of a non-western perspective of Japan's relationship with Southeast Asia, this book is a useful contribution for students and scholars of Asian Studies, Politics and International Relations.

1
The Fukuda Doctrine

Origins, ideas, and praxis^*

Lam Peng Er

The Fukuda Doctrine is postwar Japan’s first codification of its foreign policy principles towards Southeast Asia. When then Foreign Minister Aso Taro visited Manila in July 2006, he reiterated that the Fukuda Doctrine is Tokyo’s foreign policy “blueprint” for the region.¹ Earlier, when former Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro declared a Japan–ASEAN Comprehensive Economic Partnership, he too cited the Fukuda Doctrine as Tokyo’s guiding principles for its regional role.² Simply put, the Fukuda Doctrine is the official framework of Tokyo’s relations with Southeast Asia spanning both the Cold and post-Cold War epochs. This chapter seeks to evaluate whether the Fukuda Doctrine still is significant after the end of the Cold War, an era considerably different from the 1970s when the Doctrine was first formulated. Moreover, is it still relevant after the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) ended 54 years of Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) rule in 2009?

This chapter first asks: what is the Fukuda Doctrine? Why and how was it forged? Next is an analysis whether Tokyo has “operationalized” the Doctrine in post-Cold War Southeast Asia. Following that is an assessment of the Fukuda Doctrine’s efficacy in the years ahead. The central claim is that the Fukuda Doctrine still is important as a basic framework for Tokyo’s relations with Southeast Asia after the Cold War’s end and that its application is mutually beneficial. Indeed, the Fukuda Doctrine began as a set of ideas and has become a “praxis” in Japan’s foreign policy.³ However, Japan and ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) today are facing a new set of challenges not envisaged when the Fukuda Doctrine was first forged: bridging the developmental gap between the richer and poorer ASEAN states; building an East Asian Community (EAC) in the long run; ensuring the safety of the sea lanes; the consolidation of peace in areas which suffered from internal conflict (Cambodia, Mindanao in the Philippines, Aceh in Indonesia, and East Timor); and environmental protection especially climate change. Moreover, Tokyo today is playing an active role in the security architecture of Southeast Asia—a dimension not touched upon by the Fukuda Doctrine. Nevertheless, this chapter argues that the essence of the Doctrine—a “heart-to-heart” relationship—is a principle and norm which should be applied not only to Japan–Southeast Asian relations but also Japan–China– Korea ties to secure a historical reconciliation and underpin an insipient East Asian regionalism.

The new DPJ government may not wish to make explicit references to the Fukuda Doctrine because it had been articulated earlier by LDP prime ministers. However, the norms of the Fukuda Doctrine—non-militarism, a “heart-to-heart” relationship, support for ASEAN, and an active political role in Southeast Asia— have become part of Japan’s foreign policy “DNA” which transcends partisan party politics. Arguably, the Fukuda Doctrine is a time-tested diplomatic approach and strategy for Tokyo which may well survive regime change and rotation of Japanese political parties-in-power. According to the DPJ’s manifesto, the new ruling party is keen to promote an EAC. But the EAC will not come into fruition if relations are bad between Japan and Southeast Asia. A key building block for a nascent EAC, therefore, will be good Japan–Southeast Asian relations underpinned by the tenets of the Fukuda Doctrine. Thus far, the new DPJ government led consecutively by Prime Ministers Hatoyama Yukio, Kan Naoto, and Noda Yoshihiko has not repudiated the Fukuda Doctrine in its foreign policy pronouncements, possibly for want of a better doctrine.

The making of a doctrine

Japan in the mid-1970s was remarkably different from the war-shattered, defeated, demoralized, and international pariah state in 1945. By the 1970s, Japan had emerged as the world’s second largest economic superpower, settled reparations, and established diplomatic relations with its Asian neighbors (including the People’s Republic of China), reacquired Okinawa from the US, and regained its national confidence. Tokyo was, therefore, ready for the next stage in its foreign policy now that the “settlement” of the World War II legacy was almost complete.⁴

However, Tokyo’s rapid rise as a great economic power created ambivalence in Southeast Asia that erupted in mass demonstrations and violence in Bangkok and Jakarta during then Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei’s January 1974 Southeast Asian visit. Many factors drove these anti-Japanese riots: the Southeast Asian perception that Tokyo was dominating the region economically whereas it was doing so militarily three decades before; that Japanese management did not promote indigenous talent and unduly relied on ethnic Chinese domiciled in Southeast Asia for business deals. Demonstrating against Japan was also an indirect way for the protesters to embarrass the ruling regimes of Thailand and Indonesia.⁵

Tokyo’s Diplomatic Bluebook for 1974 noted:

Criticism of Japan has increased in various Southeast Asian countries in recent years against its sharply increased enormous economic presence, the business methods of Japanese enterprises and also the behavior of Japanese residents in those countries. On the occasion of the Prime Minister’s visit, local students staged anti-Japanese demonstrations and riots in Bangkok and Jakarta; protests also occurred in Malaysia and elsewhere.⁶

Besides the shock of the 1974 anti-Japanese demonstrations, Tokyo also had to face the geopolitical reality that its American ally might pull out of Southeast Asia militarily given its defeat and withdrawal from Vietnam in 1975. In this regard, the American vacuum in Indochina and a reduced presence in Southeast Asia also created political space for Japan as an economic great power to conceivably play a larger role in the region. Tokyo then was confronted by a tense and turbulent Southeast Asia divided between a triumphant communist bloc in Indochina and nervous anti-communist states that have yet to solidify ASEAN—then barely ten years old—as a coherent and credible organization which could maintain regional order.

In November 1976, at a meeting comprising Japanese ambassadors from Southeast Asian countries to review their nation’s relations with the region, they concluded that Tokyo must support and strengthen ASEAN as a regional organization, and also seek better relations with Vietnam to wean it away from the Soviet Union.⁷ In the following year, ASEAN extended its first invitation to Japan to attend its summit in Kuala Lumpur. This was a golden opportunity to Tokyo to establish closer ties with the ASEAN states.

Then Prime Minister Fukuda Takeo seized the opportunity to not only attend the summit but also visit Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore, Thailand, the Philippines, and Burma (a non-ASEAN state then). However, instead of issuing six separate communiqués in each country, a group of diplomats tasked to prepare the speech felt that there would be a greater impact if the Prime Minister were to focus on and deliver his keynote address in Manila, the last stop of his Southeast Asian tour. The drafters of Fukuda’s speech were guided by the following considerations: first, now that Tokyo had settled the issues of reparations and reestablishing diplomatic relations in Southeast Asia, what should it do next? Second, now that Japan had emerged as a great economic power, what should its appropriate political role be in Southeast Asia?

According to Edamura Sumio (then Assistant Director General of the Asian Bureau, Ministry of Foreign Affairs), he was tasked with writing the Prime Minister’s speech.⁸ His colleague Tanino Sakutaro, Director of Southeast Asia Division II, proposed that the Prime Minister’s speech should have a set of guiding principles. Tanino then came up with the catchphrase that became associated with the Fukuda Doctrine—“a heart-to-heart relationship” (kokoro to kokoro no fureai).⁹ Nishiyama Takehiko, Director of the Area Policy Division, and Nakae Yosuke, Director General of the Asian Bureau, also contributed to the drafting of the document.¹⁰

In the early draft, one of the ideas mentioned was that Japan would seek to play a bridging role to reconcile the non-communist ASEAN states and communist Indochina to enhance regional peace and stability. That Japan would act as a diplomatic bridge was an innovative idea because, hitherto, its role and identity were basically that of an economic creature and follower of the US in geopolitics. Indeed, Japan neither forged a foreign policy doctrine for the first time in the postwar era at the behest of the US nor consulted Washington on its formulation.¹¹ Arguably, the articulation of the Fukuda Doctrine was a turning point for Japanese foreign policy—a conscious shift from a reactive to an active political actor in regional affairs. Moreover, that Tokyo would help different regime types with competing ideological and economic systems to co-exist peacefully was another bold idea in an era of Cold War polarization.

The Fukuda Doctrine can be interpreted as reflecting a more confident and assertive Japan that had emerged from a catastrophic military defeat and American occupation to become a great economic power seeking a new political role to play in its Asian neighborhood. However, the identity of postwar Japan that had recovered economically from World War II was not that of an ambitious great military power but of an aid donor and civilian power between ASEAN and the communist Indochinese bloc—a norm that is congruent with Article 9 (the famous no-war clause) of its pacifist constitution. Although Japan exercised its initiative in forging the Fukuda Doctrine, its ideas, essence, and content did not contradict the US–Japan alliance. While Tokyo was enlarging its political role in Southeast Asia, it remained a steadfast ally of the US. Indeed, a stronger Japanese role in Southeast Asia which diminished the Soviet presence then would be in the interest of the US in the context of the Cold War.

After the draft was completed, it was submitted to the Prime Minister for his approval. Owada Hisashi, Fukuda’s personal secretary, then informed Edamura that the Prime Minister wanted another principle to be added to his speech: that Japan disavows becoming a great military power again.¹² In this regard, the final product was a collective effort by bureaucrats from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs but also had the imprint and political backing of Fukuda himself. The Prime Minister did not simply place a rubber stamp on the Doctrine. His key contribution was the insistence that Japan would eschew the role of a great military power. This was reassuring to the Southeast Asian countries that wondered whether Tokyo might eventually translate its economic preeminence into military power and lead to further great power rivalry that would destabilize the region.

As stated earlier, Fukuda shaped the draft by insisting on the clause that Japan rejects the role of a great military power. Although Fukuda Takeo was a staunch conservative, he embraced the pacifist norms of the Japanese constitution by wisely projecting these norms onto Tokyo’s relations with Southeast Asia. In this regard, Fukuda’s rejection of militarism was consistent with the mainstream values of the Japanese people who abhor war. Henceforth, Japan acquired an identity of a peace-loving state in Southeast Asia through words and deeds. Subsequently, Fukuda also embraced the “heart-to-heart relationship” as the most important feature of his doctrine.¹³

On August 18, 1977 in Manila, Fukuda summarized his speech as follows.

First, Japan, a nation committed to peace, rejects the role of a military power, and on that basis is resolved to contribute to the peace and prosperity of Southeast Asia, and of the world community.

Second, Japan, as a true friend of the countries of Southeast Asia, will do its best to consolidate the relationship of mutual confidence and trust based on “heart-to-heart” understanding with these countries, in wide-ranging fields covering not only political and economic areas but also social and cultural areas.

Third, Japan will be an equal partner of ASEAN and its member countries, and cooperate positively with them in their own efforts to strengthen their solidarity and resilience, together with other nations of like mind outside the region, while aiming at fostering a relationship based on mutual understanding with the nations of Indochina, and will thus contribute to the building of peace and prosperity throughout Southeast Asia.¹⁴

To be sure, when Fukuda first delivered his speech in Manila, it was not yet labeled a doctrine. But it gradually acquired the status of an official doctrine of Japan which was accepted and welcomed by the ASEAN states. Simply put, Fukuda’s Manila speech became doctrine through the consent of the ASEAN states. Indeed, the ideas of the Manila speech was forged in the crucible of the Cold War realpolitik b...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of illustrations
• List of contributors
• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 The Fukuda Doctrine: origins, ideas, and praxis
• 2 The Fukuda Doctrine: diplomacy with a vision
• 3 Great powers, ASEAN, and Japan: the Fukuda Doctrine and thirty-five years after
• 4 Major power relations, regional order, and Japan–ASEAN relations
• 5 Great power relations and their impact on Japan–Southeast Asian relations: a Chinese perspective
• 6 Japan in the foreign relations of the ASEAN states
• 7 Japan and ASEAN in East Asian Community-building: activating the Fukuda Doctrine
• 8 Quo vadis, Asiae?: changing Japan–ASEAN relations and the future of Asian regional architecture
• 9 New Japan–ASEAN cooperation for institutional building in the Asia-Pacific: beyond the Fukuda Doctrine?
• Appendix 1: Fukuda Doctrine Prime Minister Fukuda Takeo’s Doctrine Speech
• Appendix 2: Fukuda Doctrine ASEAN Secretary General-Designate Dr. Surin Pitsuwan, “Fukuda Doctrine: Impact and Implications on Japan–ASEAN Relations”
• Appendix 3: Fukuda Doctrine Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo, When the Pacific Ocean becomes an “Inland Sea”: Five Pledges to a Future Asia that “Acts Together”
• Appendix 4: Address by H.E. Dr. Hatoyama Yukio Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio, “Japan’s New Commitment to Asia: Toward the Realization of an East Asian Community”
• Select bibliography
• Index