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New generation' free trade agreements now include 'Trade and Sustainable Development' (TSD) chapters designed to improve environmental provisions within overall trading arrangements. The wide-ranging European Union (EU)-Japan agreement of 2018 represents the culmination of a trend towards the greater inclusion of such TSD elements, and, as it covers one-third of global GDP, the significance of this agreement for trading relations cannot be understated. Comparing it with other agreements involving Japan and the EU, I argue that greater attention to sustainable development in trade connections, notwithstanding tangible significant environmental improvements, further embeds an anthropocentric narrative of trade-environment linkages and supports a 'win–win' linkage between enhancing economic growth and ensuring environmental protections. Through an eco-centric critique, I seek to challenge the fundamental anthropocentric assumptions underpinning such inclusions and explore the ways in which the language of environmental protection and climate change has been depoliticised by a particular framing of sustainable development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The term 'climate leadership' became popular in the 1990s, in relation to international negotiations aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions and other environmental mitigations. Since that time, international attention – borne out by scientific study and a rapidly changing planetary climate - has shifted from global warming, the ozone layer and greenhouse gas emissions, to energy production, scientific innovation, and, by the 2020s, a strong focus on decarbonisation and securing net zero carbon output by the middle of the century. One important strand of negotiation has been the annual Conferences of the Parties (COP) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), which have witnessed different states playing lead roles at different times. By interrogating the main academic debates about climate leadership, this article examines Japan's participation in the COP process along a structural-normative axis. In so doing, it charts the path from Japan's apparent success at Kyoto in 1997 and its growing green reputation, to its subsequent 'fall from green' in later years and in the wake of COP26 in 2021. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contends that the creation of a legacy by students enables them to situate their time and experiences at university within their broader life goals and expectations. Legacy learning refers to the act of creating an archive or artefact for the benefit of posterity; collating, collecting and creating a virtual or tangible article, or objet, for successive cohorts to utilise as a learning resource. It is also a tangible product that students may use to demonstrate their skills to prospective employers; something to take away with them from the process of learning. At the heart of the concept are two key factors: collaboration and the process of self-reflection. This article illustrates legacy learning through the examination of a final year module on Asia for which small groups of students had to produce a documentary video and individual self-reflection paper. Although the putative goal of the endeavour was envisioned as the realisation of the documentary itself, the self-reflection exercise by students suggests that the underlying learning value of the exercise may in fact rest in the self-realisation of the learner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the current attempt by the European Union and Japan to negotiate a Strategic Partnership Agreement (SPA). Sitting alongside negotiations for an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA), this SPA represents an attempt to reignite bilateral relations between these two global powerhouses. Still confined by the origins of their institutionalised partnership in 1991, this article argues that both sides find it hard to break away from earlier functional and normative assumptions about their relative significance and about each other, in order to forge a new meaningful, overarching partnership. It examines the development of Japan–EU relations building up to the preparations for this SPA, against the background of path-dependent processes of engagement. Path dependency in its various forms ‘views institutions as ‘carriers of history,’ which maintain existing behavioural norms and cultural patterns throughout time’. Despite some of the problems such claims elicit, as will be explored below, this article proposes that path dependency – and a particular focus on ‘imprinting’ – offers a useful starting point for explaining the apparent institutional inertia and incremental change that characterise much of this bilateral relationship today. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The proliferation of digital technology--both as hardware and software--provides opportunities for activist groups around the world to connect with one another more rapidly and efficiently than ever before. And as mobile Internet technology (including smartphones, personal digital assistants, and laptops) becomes cheaper and more readily available, the number of services offered to individuals has increased dramatically, including voice communication, Internet browsing, and data transfer. At the same time, the rise in transnational advocacy networks means that non-state actors are garnering new voices and challenging both old and new sites of authority, from local governments and state agencies to regional and international organizations. Based on fieldwork and with a focus on the process of interaction within transnational groups in Southeast Asia, this article adopts a communities of practice (COP) approach and applies it to the impact of digital networking in order to test some of the questions posed about the nature of the so-called technological revolution and to assess the ways in which technological advancement has affected these groups. It hypothesizes that even new and potentially levelling forms of communication can only respond to and reshape the pre-existing social conditions and organizational structures within which network participants function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are many examples today of transnational advocacy groups, and much scholarship to identify how their growing presence contributes to understanding new and complex forms of global governance. This article seeks to present a corrective to the general trend to regard the “transnational” as a specific site of political engagement, and instead it draws principally on the work of Henri Lefebvre and scholarship from Human Geography to find ways to examine transnational advocacy as the ongoing process resulting from intersecting and diverse experiences of individuals and groups. In so doing, it aims further to redefine the spatiality of activism, by questioning how advocates determine the physical borders within which they function alongside those cognitive borders to which they attach themselves, and how those very borders are constantly redefined by their interactions. Using illustrative examples from Asia, this article proposes the need to rethink the transnational along three intersecting dimensions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This introduction to the articles that follow considers the impact of the apparent decline of the West and the likely impact of China's rise on the region in this period of surprising flux. We provide a brief analysis of the main issues that are affecting the Asia-Pacific's three most significant states - the United States, China and Japan. Key questions for all of them and for the rest of this collection are about the very nature and identity of the region itself, and its relationship to the global sphere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do non-governmental organisations (NGOs) interact with one another in specific geographical locations or over specific issue areas? This article evaluates the social learning capacities that may facilitate the development of new communities of practice among NGOs. It focuses on the structures in which NGOs have to work, the nature of the processes of interaction in which they participate, and their motivations for wanting to coordinate with one another in the first place. Based on fieldwork conducted in 2005 and 2006 in Southeast Asia, this paper focuses on the mechanisms for social learning among mine action NGOs in Southeast Asia and the ways in which what might be called a “community” of mine action in the region is starting to develop. At the same time, it raises a number of important questions regarding the coordination of NGO activities in all fields of activity and in any geographical situation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on peacekeeping activities of Japan. The author says that the country's responses to peacekeeping have been reactive and ad hoc, including from being moved by the U.S.-led international union in the aftermath of the 1991 to 1992 Gulf War to U.S. calls for support over Iraq in 2003. He argues that these actions raise debate on how Japan can respond to international crises.

This article examines the types of region–to–region dialogue evident in relations among the states of the European Union and East Asia, with a particular focus on ASEM and the EU–ASEAN dialogue. It examines how the EU utilizes interregionalism as one mechanism for managing economic and political relations with a growing yet disparate region. For the states of East Asia, ASEM offers a means of dealing collectively with twenty–five European states, provides a first–hand examination of the practices of regional integration and establishes a framework in which East Asia can present itself as a regional political and economic entity and realize the ‘third side’ in a global triangle of regional blocs. Building upon a particular historical trajectory of relations among the states of the EU and East Asia, ASEM represents an important space for articulating not only the nature of region, but also the role of non–state actors, which have increasingly come to occupy a significant position in transnational affairs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Japanese government interests in Southeast Asia continue to expand. Official speeches refer to the growth of a 'community that acts together', while institutional linkages have been strengthened with the creation of the ASEAN Plus Three process and by a proliferation of bilateral arrangements. These developing networks raise questions about Japan's future orientation towards its wider region. This article assesses recent developments, by challenging some of the fundamental assumptions about Japan's regional behaviour. First, it examines how a tendency to render mutually exclusive bilateral and multilateral forms of behaviour serves to obfuscate a focus on the fundamental processes of regional engagement. Second, this article delineates Japan's changing orientation towards the region as part of a process of 'complex regional multilateralism', in which a range of often ad hoc engagements have resulted in a loose framework for interaction. In so doing, it suggests that Japan's current policy-making approach towards Southeast Asia may be regarded as a continuation of policy that is, nevertheless, being buffeted by a range of - primarily regional - external influences. The resulting set of perceived strategies demonstrates not an either/or approach to regional engagement but, rather, shows how the Japanese government manages changing circumstances to carve out a new role for itself in Southeast Asia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At first sight, the East Asian financial crisis represents an instance of Japan failing the test of regional leadership - as evidenced by its abandonment of initial proposals for an Asian Monetary Fund (AMF) in the face of US and Chinese opposition in 1997. However, if a second look is taken, and one which is sensitised to the fundamental characteristics of its diplomacy, then Japan can be seen as far more effective in augmenting its regional leadership role than previously imagined. Indeed, this article demonstrates that Japanese policy-makers have resurrected, over the longer term and in different guises, AMF-like frameworks which provide a potential springboard for further regional cooperation. Hence, the aims of this article are twofold. The first is to demonstrate the overall efficacy of Japanese regional economic diplomacy, and its ability to control outcomes through steering East Asia towards enhanced monetary cooperation. The second is to explain the reasons behind Japan's distinctive policy approach towards the financial crisis and general lessons for understanding its foreign policy. The article seeks to do so by asking three fundamental questions about the 'what', 'why' and 'how' of Japan's regional role: 'what' in terms of the dominant behavioural patterns of Japan's economic diplomacy; 'why' in terms of the motivations for this behaviour; and 'how' in terms of Japan's instrumentalisation of its regional policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Kosovo crisis of 1999 took place on the European continent and was dominated by US-led NATO actions aimed at assisting Kosovo in its struggle against what was considered to be ethnic cleansing by the Serbian government. While many observers may be unaware that the Japanese government had a role to play in the unfolding events, this article examines how and why that participation is important for an understanding of Tokyo's contemporary foreign policy orientation. To this end, the article assesses how Japanese participation in the international efforts aimed at restoring peace to the region were channelled through specific multilateral fora. In particular, it assesses the development of Japan's role as part of the United Nations, NATO and the G7/8 processes, and it examines the opportunities introduced by the cessation of NATO bombing raids after May 1999. The article also explains how this participation can be understood to illustrate an orientation towards 'complex engagement', as the Tokyo administration seeks to assert its international profile more actively in the pursuit of non-military objectives. This concept, which is developed throughout, will be shown to represent an underlying trend in the changing formulation of Japanese foreign policy. Its still tentative foundations rest upon a state-society cooperation used to eschew the pursuit of active military diplomacy in favour of a multi-layered, non-military orientation which rests upon the notion of human security. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deals with the status of Japan's foreign relations with Europe with regards to the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM). Role of Japan in ASEM; Benefits of the development of further relations with Europe to Japan; How the 1998 ASEM summit held in London offered solutions to the Asian currency crisis.