Japan and ASEAN

The conference explored ASEAN’s role as a critical actor in southeast Asia, and the nature of its contemporary relations with Japan. The overarching focus of the conference was on ASEAN’s unique institutional identity, its potential future trajectories, and ways to engage with Japan. This research paper was launched at the conference, providing our findings and recommendations on the way forward for ASEAN-Japan partnerships to gain more traction.
See more at: https://www.chathamhouse.org/event/asean-regional-role-and-relations-japan#sthash.z0OCoJcj.dpuf

Memasuki dekade kedua abad 21, perhatian Jepang terhadap politik internasional lebih berorientasi pada penguatan perannya sebagai aktor global dalam menciptakan stabilitas keamanan dan perdamaian dunia demi keberlangsungan pembangunan dan pertumbuhan ekonomi global yang saling menguntungkan. Akan tetapi, ditengah kompleksitas persoalan dunia yang semakin meningkat, maka diperlukan terobosan yang bersifat inovatif pula. Sejalan dengan terpilihnya Tokyo sebagai kota tuan rumah “2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games” oleh IOC pada tanggal 7 September 2013, diplomasi Jepang dengan masyarakat internasional telah diperkuat dengan nilai-nilai sportifitas dan semangat perdamaian. Dalam konteks hubungan bilateral Jepang dengan ASEAN, hal tersebut kemudian diterjemahkan melalui pembentukan badan kerja sama di bidang olahraga yang bernama ASEAN Plus Japan Ministerial Meeting on Sports (AMMS+Japan). Selain sebagai sarana untuk mempromosikan nilai-nilai Olimpiade dan Paralimpiade di kawasan Asia Tenggara, pembentukan badan kerja sama baru ini juga sekaligus menjadi terobosan awal bagi Jepang untuk mewujudkan harapan akan terciptanya ekosistem perdamaian dan stabilitas dunia. Jepang memulai terobosannya dari kawasan Asia Tenggara mengingat kawasan tersebut memegang peranan penting bagi kelangsungan perekonomian Jepang dan pertumbuhan perekonomian global.

This report focuses on the latent potential and essentials of impact investing. It is an emerging, innovative form of SDGs investment for realization of the SDGs in ASEAN. Impact investing is distinct in its intentionality in creating and measuring societal impact along with financial return, beyond mitigating risk and incorporating factors related to environment, society and governance (ESG). This report aims to further mobilize financial resources that can be measured in terms of both financial and societal performance to accelerate realization of the SDGs, as part of the “Decade of Action”.

The Fukuda Doctrine has been heralded as “a major turning point”  in Japan-ASEAN relations because it represented Japan’s shift away from an economically oriented Southeast Asian policy to a more politically oriented one. But if encouraging stability in Southeast Asia is considered a political goal, then Japan would have had been involved in the region as a political actor for years prior to the pronouncement of the Doctrine. Also, the Doctrine would then be more accurately interpreted as merely an event that marked a high point in Japan’s Southeast Asian strategy, which had by then long moved away from Yoshida-era economics-driven relations. So why did diplomatic engagement between Japan and Southeast Asia only experience a major spike in 1977 if existing factors which could have fuelled high profile relations had been in existence for some time prior? Most scholars explain the timing with external and domestic factors from the Japanese perspective, but a select few have noted in passing that Japan was unable to play a greater role in the region simply because ASEAN was not ready. If so, why did ASEAN become ready only in 1977?

This work is a collection of lectures by twelve ambassadors to Japan on Japan's perceived position and role in the international community, each followed by transcripts of discussions between the ambassadors and a group of predominantly Japanese postgraduate students of international relations, law, economics, history, and comparative culture. The lectures were presented and the discussions undertaken in English, 19 April to 19 July 2005, at the Korakuen campus of Chuo University in Tokyo, as part of the International Policy Studies Forum, organised under the auspices of the University Graduate School and the Faculty of Policy Studies, Chuo University. The collection is edited and introduced by the organisers and moderators of the Forum, David Ewick and Modjtaba Sadria. 191 pp.

Il Sud-Est asiatico è un'area geografica di grande importanza per il Giappone. Dal punto di vista economico, l' ASEAN è il principale partner commerciale di Tokyo dopo la Cina e gli Stati Uniti, nonché uno dei centri nevralgici delle catene globali del valore per fornitori e reti di imprese giapponesi. Negli ultimi anni, come ha dimostrato il recente summit bilaterale tra il Giappone e l' ASEAN, l'attenzione nipponica verso la regione è suscitata dalla volontà di controbilanciare la presenza cinese nelle reti infrastrutturali e dalla necessità di incrementare le relazioni politiche e culturali.

SUNSHOWER Exhibition catalogue: SUNSHOWER – Contemporary Art from Southeast Asia 1980s to Now, Date of Issue: August 9, 2017

>>Exhibition-catalogues are significant. However big the show, once taken down, it is primarily the catalogue, that speaks for the exhibition-artworks’ relationship with each other and the larger field. When the field is young and undecided, the catalogue, embodying the curator’s vision and position, matters more. This critic’s own knowledge of Southeast Asian art is grounded in the scholarship built through multiple-essay catalogues of historically relevant shows. A number of these were produced by Japan’s institutions, particularly with the opening of the Fukuoka Art Museum in 1979. Take for instance the principal text from the catalogue of one such regional exhibition, ‘Art in Southeast Asia 1997: Glimpses into the Future’, produced by The Japan Foundation Asia Centre in ‘97. Curator Junichi Shioda’s essay ‘Glimpses into the Future of Southeast Asian Art: A Vision of what Art should be’, constructed and cross-examined the idea of a regional canon, independent from Euramerican modernism, through the socially-rooted practices of artists from five Southeast Asian countries. Two other academic essays in this exhibition-catalogue further provided analyses of art in Southeast Asia and contemporary art in Indonesia.
Around the same time, a similarly vital exhibition ‘Contemporary Art in Asia: Traditions/Tensions’ was curated by Thai scholar Apinan Poshyananda. This exhibition’s catalogue included seven essays that built the discourse around the politically charged practices of various Southeast Asian artists among others from Asia. Such exhibition-catalogues sought intellectual contributions from field-scholars who connect socio-economic complexities, and ground artistic practices in their respective historical, cultural and political contexts. Such catalogue-essays, written two decades ago or today, are important to establishing the canon around Southeast Asian art because scholarly analyses of exhibition artworks, and their comparison with other pieces, permit the discerning of larger currents and parallels that give shape to the field. That artists from Southeast Asia have been potent voices for social change and reformation is established through scholars’ analyses of artworks presented in writing for exhibition-catalogues, past and present.<<