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This paper focuses on the role Japanese comprehensive economic partnership agreements (EPAs) play within the accelerating process of regional integration throughout East Asia, which had been a comparatively white spot on the map of bilateral trade liberalization until the late 1990s. The accompanying "noodle bowl" phenomenon of individual agreements with exclusive character and various rules poses one of the central future challenges for Japan, whose economy is heavily dependent on intra-regional trade. Japanese EPAs go substantially beyond liberalization of trade in goods and services, including further so-called "WTO plus" or "deeper integration" issues, e.g. measures for promoting investment and competition or protection of intellectual property rights. However, there are also some critical points to raise, such as the low basic trade liberalization rate or the special treatment of agricultural products. The respective contract partners often make much wider concessions due to their unfavourable bargaining position. Drawing especially on these imbalances in trade liberalization, the underlying paper compares the existing Japanese trade agreements within East Asia in respect to their scope and tries to shed some light on how "comprehensive" Japanese EPAs actually are. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines economic integration in East Asia with a focus on the key issues in harmonizing bilateral free trade agreements (FTAs). Even though market forces, the Sino-Japanese rivalry, and functional cooperation may help drive regionalism forward, the foundation of any significant integration in the East Asian trading system will be the ASEAN+1 FTAs with China, Japan, and South Korea. It is therefore important to examine the way in which these agreements structure cooperation. This study examines some of the major choices made in the negotiation of the ASEAN-Japan Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (AJCEPA) and the ways in which these choices might help or hinder the consolidation of economic regionalism. If AJCEPA is to be anything more than an umbrella for Japan's bilateral FTAs with ASEAN members, it must achieve greater uniformity in coverage of issues and, especially, rules of origin. The comparison of Japan's bilateral FTAs that closes the paper suggests the magnitude of this challenge. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Fuji-Kodak photo film, port business, and NTT interconnection charge disputes, which developed between the U.S. and Japan around and after the establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO), significantly increased the importance of multilateral trade rules. The Japanese government?s response to U.S. pressure varied in each of these disputes; it was more conciliatory in the NTT interconnection charge dispute than the other two. To explain this variation, this paper presents an argument: the timing of a trade dispute in the development of multilateral rules is an important determinant of the response, because the timing determines the gap between multilateral rules and Japanese domestic government and business practices. The case analyses of the three disputes demonstrate that, since a smaller gap exists in the early and late stages of multilateral-rule development than in the intermediate stage, the Japanese government resisted U.S. pressure more effectively in the former than in the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan, the largest foreign aid donor throughout the 1990s, went through a visible transformation of foreign aid policy during this period into the first few years of the 21st century. By focusing on domestic institutional and political factors that have heavily influenced Japan’s foreign aid policy-making, the paper goes beyond the conventional neomercantilism or reactive-state based explanation of Japan’s aid policy and argues that the domestic institutional setting, in terms of aid bureaucracy, budget sources, and political constituents of each bureaucracy significantly influences aid policy. In the post Asian Crisis and post 9/11 world, the shift in aid priority emerged visible due to reformed institutional arrangement of foreign aid, and changing perceptions of security in Japan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The linkage of developmental aid to the promotion of democratic governance in recipient countries has stimulated both policy and scholarly interest. Many aid donors (e.g., governments and multilateral organizations) have been replacing the conventional single task aid concentrating on growth promotion with this type of multitask aid. The linkage between growth and democracy is not only integral part of the liberal discourse that provides a cognitive foundation for foreign aid, but also an instrument to enhance the efficiency and political palatability of foreign aid in the early twentieth-first century. The current paper examines multitask aid in both normative and empirical terms. Normatively, it outlines three distinct conceptual perspectives on the relationship growth and politics--liberalism, authoritarianism and realism. Empirically, it analyzes the conduct of Japanese aid that directs toward mostly illiberal Asian states and is criticized for focusing excessively on growth with a limited attention to democracy. Finally, it deduces the Japanese government's beliefs from its aid practices and illuminates reasons why Japan often deviates from the international liberal norms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic integration has been progressing rapidly in Northeast Asia, particularly among Japan, China, and South Korea, and a large volume of industrial and cultural products flow across the region. Despite high-level economic integration, the three countries have not developed an institutional arrangement to stabilize regional politics. To the contrary, Japan and the other two countries continue to dispute over issues related to Japan?s wartime past, including controversies over Yasukuni shrine and Japan?s history textbooks. Based on the constructivist approach, this paper explains why the three countries fight over these issues, focusing on state identity and politics of recognition. Japan developed its state identity mainly through interactions with the United States. Japanese leaders emphasize that Japan, as a liberal democratic country, has developed a pacifist stance after World War II. They want other countries to recognize that their actions, including the prime minister?s visit to the shrine, are consistent with the pacifist stance. In contrast, the memory of Japan?s past colonial rule plays an important part in China and South Korea?s state identity formation. State leaders in each country denounce the colonial rule as unjust invasion while praising past nationalist leaders? fight against it as patriotic. They demand Japan?s current leaders to recognize (acknowledge) wrongdoings of Japan?s colonial rule, opposing any actions that imply Japanese leaders? support for or tolerance of the colonial rule. Through the analysis of the current controversies between the three countries, this paper develops a theoretical discussion of identity and recognition in international relations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japan-EU economic relations have shifted from trade conflicts in the 1980s to mutual cooperation in the 1990s, and both sides have deepened their bilateral institutionalization in the 2000s. This paper assesses the contours and analytics of the deepening institutionalization of the Japan-EU economic relations. Measures of the institutionalization refer to the bilateral governmental frameworks (such as the EU-Japan Annual Summit, and the Regulatory Reform Dialogue), mutually-agreed documents to be implemented by the two sides (such as the EU-Japan Action Plan), as well as the business-side framework (such as the EU-Japan Business Dialogue Round Table and its recommendations.) This paper seeks to survey these ongoing Japan-EU institutional developments, following official documents and economic data on the Japan-EU relations. After tracking the institutional shifts of the Japan-EU economic relations, the paper examines factors that have promoted and hindered their developments. Specifically, it will extract and analyze economic, political and cultural factors that have all been contributory factors. These include, for example, the ups and downs of the Japanese economy (?the Lost Decade?), and advances in globalization (rise of China, deepening of EU). ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper first asks why and how the ASEAN+3 process got off the ground in the late 1990s. It will be argued that ASEAN took a catalytic role in bringing together major powers in Northeast Asia at the historical critical juncture precipitated by the Asian financial crisis. The paper then explores a major shift in both Japanese and Chinese policies toward East Asian regionalism, suggesting that full support from the two was crucial for moving the ASEAN+3 process forward. It highlights the different approaches that Japan and China employed in order to strengthen their relationships with ASEAN countries in trade initiatives, financial cooperation, and development cooperation. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 1995 Japan has been taking a very proactive role in using WTO law to challenge its dominant trade partners, the United States. But its emphasis on a rule-based approach is not only relegated to the United States. In fact, it promises also to spill over into trade disputes with key partners in Asia where, for historical, reasons Japan has had trouble taking confrontational stances. This is particularly true for the case for China, which is widely perceived as the rising economic power that poses a direct challenge to Japan across a number of critical and sensitive economic issues. This paper focuses specifically on the interplay between WTO law and politics as Japan seeks to deal with China across a number of trade issues and disputes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the post- World War II period, Japan put heavy emphasis on the relations with the United States and was hesitant to participate in regional arrangements in its foreign economic policy. However, in the 1990s and early 2000s, Japan continues to put emphasis on regional framework. Two challenges Japan faced in the 1990s; burst of bubble economy in Japan and Asian financial crisis, accelerated Japan’s positive attitude towards regional economic framework. The paper shows how these two challenges changed the existing conditions of Japan’s foreign economic policy and how Japan’s foreign economic policy changed in the post 9/11 world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the deepening economic interdependence between China and Japan, their political relationship is deteriorating, which is frequently described as ?cold politics, hot economics? during recent years. Several incidents regarding Sino-Japanese relations had shown that Chinese netizens exercised their influence on Chinese foreign policy decision-making. This paper argues the April 2005 anti-Japanese demonstration held in China can be regarded as an exercise of brinkmanship by the Chinese government, which pacified the growing anger among the netizens on one hand, and tried to ask for Japan?s concession on the other hand. Because of the growing Chinese popular nationalism, Chinese government can no longer make its foreign policy totally free from public scrutiny. When the traditional state-centric realist and state-interdependent liberalist theories are inadequate to address contemporary Chinese foreign policy due to the increasing consideration of the anti-Japanese sentiments among the Chinese netizens, strategic approach can be another way. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the late 1990s, Japan and South Korea concluded their first bilateral FTA agreements in completely opposite sequences despite similar domestic pressures. Japan, concluded an "easier" FTA (relatively weak opposition by domestic interests) with Singapore first and then concluded a more "difficult" FTA (relatively strong opposition by domestic interests) with Mexico. South Korea concluded a more difficult FTA first with Chile and then moved to Singapore. This paper argues that these differences in sequence account in part for the different contexts in which Japan and South Korean played their respective two-level games in their more difficult negotiations. The pre-existence of the Singapore FTA dampened domestic pressure from Japanese business interests to get into the bilateral FTA game. Thus, Japan could approach the more difficult FTA negotiation knowing that a "no agreement" outcome would not fundamentally increase domestic pressure. This alternative to no agreement put the Japanese in a stronger international bargaining position. South Korea negotiated its harder case without a pre-existing bilateral FTA, knowing that the relative domestic pressure to get in the FTA game would increase without an agreement. This relatively worse bargaining position created a context in which South Korean conceded more to the Chileans and were forced to utilize higher side payments in order to gain support for the agreement domestically. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Relations between China and Japan represent an apparent puzzle. On the one hand bilateral economic interactions continue to grow significantly. On the other hand, political relations are at their lowest ebb since diplomatic normalization. In this paper we investigate the role of historical myth-making and commercial relations as determinants of bilateral political relations. We find that a gap between the two countries? collective memories as result of the instrumental use of history by elites has independently caused worsening bilateral relations, as well as increasing realist concerns about bilateral balance of power.We also develop and test a set of causal mechanisms related to commercial peace theory. Our results show that increased economic interactions have had little influence on Japanese decision-making. Further, we find that commercial interests have not been significantly harmed by bilateral political turbulence, and they have therefore not lobbied decision-makers to alter their policy position. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Japanese say they contributed substantially to China's economic development over the last quarter century by supplying substantial developmental aid. The Chinese, however, argue that Japanese ODA was economic tools for Japan's self-serving diplomacy a ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wake of the Asian financial crisis, Japan has made a significant foreign economic policy shift in the way in which it approaches Asian regional institutional building in financial and monetary cooperation. Prior to the Asian financial crisis, Japan ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On May 5th, 2007, finance ministers of ASEAN plus Three (China, Japan, and Korea) historically and unanimously agreed to establish an Asian Monetary Fund in Kyoto, Japan. This multilateral currency swap scheme is to materialize by multilateralizing the Chiang Mai Initiative, a network of bilateral currency swaps in the region that was launched and developed since 2000. At the Kyoto meeting, Asian finance ministers did not shy away from saying that the envisioned multilateral institution would be an “Asian version of the IMF,” which was first proposed by Japan in 1997 at the Annual Meeting of the IMF and the World Bank in Hong Kong. What explains the emergence and deepening of East Asian exclusionary monetary cooperation in the wake of the Asian financial crisis? Building on previous constructivist theorizations of regional integration, I account for the development of the exclusionary monetary cooperation by demonstrating the linkage between the particular forms of regional institutional development and the collectively shared “economic policy paradigms” among Asian states (or Asian states’ collective understanding of the legitimate role of the state for economic development and stability). I will compare this argument to alternative explanations drawn from realism and neoliberalism. Analytically, I will take a meso-level approach at the intersection of the international and the domestic. I will demonstrate how this mid-range approach provides a better temporal and spatial understanding of the emergence and deepening of East Asian exclusionary monetary cooperation and its relationship to U.S.-led neoliberal global economic order. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the wake of the Asian financial crisis, Japan has made a significant foreign economic policy shift in the way in which it approaches Asian regional institutional building in financial and monetary cooperation. Prior to the Asian financial crisis, Japan endorsed “open regionalism” to trade, investment, and monetary cooperation in a loosely institutionalized APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation). In stark contrast, Japan has been the leading advocate of the “exclusionary” regional institutional building in monetary and financial affairs since the late 1990s (by “exclusionary” it is meant that Japan excludes the U.S. from membership): Japan proposed and helped materialize two major exclusionary Asian monetary institutional building measures, the Chiang Mai Initiative (2000) and an Asian Monetary Fund (1997 and 2007). What explains such a major policy change? In addressing this question, I adopt and test (and possibly revise) Jeffrey Legro’s (2005) “synthetic” theoretical framework designed for the explanation of foreign policy change. By “synthetic” it is meant that foreign policy change derives from the dynamic interaction of national collective ideas with the demands of strategic circumstances and domestic political pressure. Going beyond constructivist-rationalist divide, I will demonstrate how this synthetic approach can offer a better account of Japan’s foreign economic policy change in comparison to purely power or interest-based rationalist explanations as well as purely idea-based constructivist ones. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I examine the role of Japan?s national economic identity as a foundation for its foreign economic policy towards Africa. From earlier research, it seems clear that Japanese officials and policy analysts believe that the Japanese development experience can provide important and relevant lessons to African countries. One lesson is the self-help perspective. Self-help refers to the recipient country?s ability and willingness to take responsibility for its economic problems and the initiative for their own development. Also, self-help implies reluctance for the Japanese government to directly involve itself in the domestic affairs of recipient countries. This largely explains Japan?s cautious stance towards conditionality. Moreover, at this time of Japan?s emerging ODA strategy, the government adhered to a ?request basis? position in which recipient countries first must request from the Japanese government for foreign aid. This principle embodies the idea that Japan will help only those countries that are willing to help themselves. A World Bank report noted that Japan tended to emphasize economic rather than social needs of a recipient country in applying the request-based assistance principle.Another lesson from Japan?s national identity targets its alternative view of economic development. The government pushed for its own economic policies that stood in contrast to other donor agencies or governments. In contrast to the views commonly referred to as the Washington Consensus, Japan relied on its own development experiences as a guide in assisting African countries. Its experiences suggest to the Japanese government that state administrative functions have a crucial role in the development process. In particular, the state role can facilitate needed economic production as it appeared to occur in Japan and other Asian countries. What the Japanese government has been promoting, in part, is the reduction of poverty through economic production instead of direct funding of poverty programs. From Japan?s perspective, this emphasis adheres to the concept of ownership. Ownership of the aid process has implied a relevant role for a ?developmental state;? in other words, that the state has a positive, facilitating role in the economy. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

.As regional economic integration proceeds, we should expect countries to assign greater priority to foreign policy initiatives vis-à-vis s regional partners than towards extra-regional ones. Contrary to such expectations, our analysis of Japanese foreign economic policy reveals that the Japanese government has often been more proactive in extra-regional affairs than regional ones. With the goal of analyzing this puzzle, we offer two case studies: one on finance (comparing the Japanese government’s actions during the 1980s Latin American debt crisis and during the late 1990s Asian Financial Crisis), and one on trade (comparing FTA negotiations with Mexico and South Korea). With these case studies, we pose a domestic demand explanation which probes into several aspects of private interest configuration (level of exposure, actor concentration, and preference intensity) to account for these counterintuitive outcomes. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]