Japan and Southeast Asia: the Lineaments of Quasi-hegemony

Japan has had a profound influence on Southeast Asia. Whether it is measured by Japan’s often brutal, but ultimately liberating, war-time occupation of the region, or by the more recent economic interaction, Japan has played a major part in shaping Southeast Asia’s political and economic development. At one level this is hardly surprising. Japan, as T..J. Pempel (1999: 27) reminds us, ‘remains the Gulliver in a region of economic Lilliputs’. In an East Asian region in which it continues to account for around two thirds of economic output, Japan towers over its neighbours and inevitably exercises a major influence through sheer economic weight. And yet the most striking quality of this undoubted economic power, is that it is not matched by an equivalent political influence – or certainly not at the conspicuous level of international diplomacy. This chapter will attempt to account for this paradox.