Implication of Japan’s Disaster Diplomacy in South East Asia

Abstract

          The objective of the article is to analyze and explore the paradigm and schemes which Japan has deployed for counteracting and assisting the disaster occurred in Southeast Asia countries. The concept of ‘Soft Balancing’ is used to criticize and analyze throughout the thesis in order to provide a clearer view of Japan’s movement on aiding procedures to relieve the disaster. As a result of the analysis, it is obviously shown that the strategy executed by Japan toward Southeast Asia in the post Cold War period is different from the period after World War II. Undoubtedly, Japan has put an emphasis more on non-combat military strategy, aiming to eliminate the type of adversarial relationship with Southeast Asia and moving to more cordial relationship between those Southeast Asia countries. Consequently, this can influence the level of Japan’s image in terms of trust and reliability. Recently, China has been gaining and exerting a prominent role in the region. Moreover, this maneuver of using soft-balancing tactic can be considered as an approach of which Japan sees as an important weapon to maintain its dominant image in the region in a compromised way.