The Pacific Review

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Beyond the ‘North’-’South’ impasse: self-effacing

Japan, emancipatory movements of the Global
South and West-Engineered aid architecture

Sabina Insebayeva

To cite this article: Sabina Insebayeva (21 Aug 2023): Beyond the ‘North’-’South’ impasse:
self-effacing Japan, emancipatory movements of the Global South and West-Engineered aid
architecture, The Pacific Review, DOI: 10.1080/09512748.2023.2246667

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The Pacific Review
https://doi.org/10.1080/09512748.2023.2246667

Beyond the ‘North’-’South’ impasse: self-effacing

Japan, emancipatory movements of the Global
South and West-Engineered aid architecture
Sabina Insebayevaa,b
a
Institute of Social Science, The University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan; bDepartment of Political
Science and International Relations, Nazarbayev University, Astana, Kazakhstan

ABSTRACT
The article has three objectives. The first is to reconsider the popular taken-for-
granted categories of ‘Global North’/’Global South’ and ‘Northern’ donors/’South-
ern’ providers and proposes an alternative account for examining Japan’s role
in West-engineered aid architecture. The second is to examine why Japan has
constructed a ‘sui generis’ foreign aid model by accommodating both the
OECD-DAC and SSC (South-South Cooperation) norms. Finally, this article aims
to explain how Japan’s alternative aid modality was possible by highlighting
that the academic debate has failed to capture the significance of the eman-
cipatory movements of the Global South epitomized by the 1955 Bandung
Conference for Japan’s aid policy.

KEYWORDS Foreign aid; Japan; Northern donors; Southern providers; 1955 bandung
conference

Introduction
A great deal has been written about the ‘new actors in development’. A
diverse range of state (Quadir, 2013) and nonstate actors (Fejerskov,
Lundsgaarde, & Cold-Ravnkilde, 2016) fall under this ‘new actor’ umbrella
term. However, most often, the academic spotlight has been trained on
so-called Southern partners, who have been lumped together, in contrast
to the established camp of Northern aid donors - the Organization for
Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Development Assistance
Committee (DAC).
Some scholars are mostly concerned with the transformative potential
of these ‘new’ actors. The question of whether these providers are able
to change ‘the face of development both in the Global North and the
Global South’ (Kragelund, 2019, p. 2), considering their ‘distinctive

CONTACT Sabina Insebayeva [email protected] Department of Political Science

and International Relations, Nazarbayev University, Astana, Kazakhstan
© 2023 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2 S. INSEBAYEVA

approaches to foreign aid, aligned with their own particular conceptions

of economic and social development and national interest’ (Rosser &
Tubilewicz, 2016, p. 2), has guided this strand of research. Along this line,
what started out as a ‘silent revolution’ (Woods, 2008) and ‘creative destruc-
tion’ (Kharas & Rogerson, 2012) grew into a noisy process of change, which
some would argue has pushed ‘the architecture of development cooper-
ation’ into ‘a state of flux’ (De Renzio & Seifert, 2014, p. 1860).
There currently exist various divergent views on the topic, from those
that optimistically see the entrance of these actors into the field as eman-
cipation and liberation from Northern domination (Gosovic, 2016) to those
taking a rather sceptical stance, pointing to the ‘silent hierarchy’ that is
being reproduced in South-South cooperation (Farias, 2018). Some studies
also suggest that international development has turned into a ‘battlefield’
of ideas, practices and discourses (Esteves & Assunção, 2014). In this vein,
it has been argued that ‘[t]he old aid architecture is being replaced by a
more complex and diverse landscape of development cooperation’
(Gore, 2013).
Others, in contrast, question the taken-for-granted game-changing
power of ‘new’ actors by noting the heterogeneity of the group (Rowlands,
2012), which is said to reduce its ability to challenge the established aid
regime. Moreover, while ‘new’ providers show signs of being socialized
according to certain established norms and practices (Reilly, 2012), recent
studies have documented that in addition to ‘South-to-North’ convergence,
a reverse trend—’North-to-South’—has been emerging as well
(Mawdsley, 2018).
These thought-provoking works advance different arguments; however,
what unites them is that the debate they contribute to has come to
concentrate on and be influenced by the binary categories of old and
new actors, ideas and relationships (cf. Fejerskov et al., 2016). Consequently,
while the dominant Northern/Southern binary has been very well studied,
the actors positioned at the intersection between the ‘Global North’ and
the ‘Global South’ are often left out of the discussion. Japan offers a fine
example.
Japan boasts a rich history as a major player in the global aid archi-
tecture. Since becoming one of the founding member of the DAC (formerly
known as the Development Assistance Group) in 1960 and joining the
OECD in 1964 as its first non-Western member, Japan has been widely
recognized as a member of the so-called ‘donors club’.
Nevertheless, the DAC—Japan relationship has always been awkward.
Japan has often been regarded as ‘an odd man out’ (Soderberg, 2010) and
has faced numerous and continuous criticisms regarding ‘do[ing] foreign aid
differently’ (Bobrow & Boyer, 1996). Even when Japan achieved the status as
the world’s leading aid donor in 1989, it was still treated as an outlier among
Western aid providers and ranked ‘among the worst in the donor community’
(Sato, 2013, p. 3). This is largely due to the fact, while Japanese aid shares
 The Pacific Review 3

certain similarities with ‘Western aid’, it remains rather distinct. Much of the
existing literature on Japan’s foreign aid offers several explanations for this.
Some scholars advance the argument that it is the country’s own expe-
rience of economic development that impacts Japanese aid activities (Sato
& Shimomura, 2013). Others argue that both naiatsu (internal pressures)
and gaiatsu (foreign pressures) have impacted the contours of Japanese
aid practices (Lancaster, 2010). In line with this view, it has been assumed
that Japan’s ODA has been shaped by the tensions between the kokueki
(national interest) and tsukiai (membership obligations) (Arase, 2005). While
many arguments have been advanced, most of them are guided by ratio-
nalist thinking: how Japan, as a self-interested rational actor, pursues its
national interests (e.g. the desire to secure foreign markets and raw mate-
rials) and ensures its survival (e.g. Japan’s responsiveness to US demands)
in the anarchic environment of international politics (see, for example,
Katada, 2000, p. 198). This thinking has continued to organize much that
is written about Japanese aid up to the present.
Recently, it has been pointed out that Japan’s aid shows considerable
similarities with Chinese, South Korean and Indian aid (Sato & Shimomura,
2013; Watson, 2014) and assert that the experience of receiving aid and
the donor-recipient relationship have had significant impacts on the fea-
tures of Asian aid.
Although this view is convincing, it does not fully explain why, for
example, Slovakia and Latvia, which also underwent ‘the recipient-to-donor’
transition, have ‘socialized’ into becoming ‘responsible’ and ‘proper’ donors,
having eagerly moved further ‘North’ long before they joined the OECD
DAC in 2013 and 2016, respectively (OECD, 2011). Japan, on the other
hand, while experiencing what can be described as ‘peer pressure’ from
OECD DAC members for several decades, continues to upset the existing
North/South binary.
This article asserts that even though rationalist explanations certainly
matter, this thinking alone cannot explain the entire picture of Japan’s aid
modality. What is missing in the current debate on Japan’s foreign aid
concerns the explanation of the role of non-material elements: values,
norms, and identities.
My intention here is to put forward an alternative account for examining
Japan’s role in recent international aid trends. This examination is expected
to allow us to reconsider the popular taken-for-granted categories of
‘Global South’/’Global North’ and ‘Northern’ donors/’Southern’ providers
and to yield valuable insights into Japan’s development cooperation
practices.
The rest of this section is divided into three parts. The first part will
briefly examine the importance of Japan’s ‘ambiguous’ identity and high-
light its role for Japanese ‘unique’ foreign aid strategy.
Drawing on the ‘liminality’ theory, I will argue that the reason Japan is
perceived as an ‘odd foreign aid donor’ is because its ‘oddness’ is evaluated
4 S. INSEBAYEVA

against an established norm or a standard of ‘normality’. As a result, within

the DAC’s normative discourse, Japan has acquired a ‘liminal’ identity as
a foreign aid provider. Finally, I will note how Japan has reacted to its
‘imagined’ liminality and argue that Japan has managed to translate its
‘in-betweenness’ into a strength and to challenge the existing North/South
binaries.

Neither, nor: japan’s ‘ambiguous’ identity

Identity is a socially constructed and relational concept. It is produced
and reproduced through social interaction with constitutive Others. As
argued by Inayatullah and Blaney (1996, p. 65–66), ‘the discovery of the
other is not incidental but necessary to [our] quest for meaning and
wholeness’. For Japan, however, the quest for identity has become ‘an
elusive affair’ because ‘the search has been framed between two imag-
ined extremes’ that can never be reconciled: the West and Asia
(Tamamoto, 1999).
Until the Meiji Restoration in 1868, Japan’s identity was constructed
mainly through its difference vis-à-vis Asia, particularly China (Tanaka,
1993). In 1853, a fleet of US Black Ships (Kurofune) reached the shores of
Edo Period (1603–1867) Japan. Eventually, the conclusion of the Treaty of
Kanagawa (1854) and the Treaty of Amity and Commerce (1858) marked
the end of Japan’s self-imposed isolation and the beginning of a new
phase of its foreign relations.
The perception of the international state of affairs at that time was
that with the exception of Japan, almost all Asian and African countries
had either been colonized by Western powers or, in terms of the race
towards enlightenment and civilization, had lagged far behind.
Hence, until Japan won the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895, achieved
a revision of the ‘unequal treaties’ (Auslin, 2004) and gained confidence
as a powerful country, the Japanese were preoccupied with the question
of how a small and weak country such as Japan located at the outskirts
of Asia could maintain its independence (Oguma, 2002).
The idea of Fukuzawa Yukichi ‘Datsu-A Ron’ (‘Leave Asia’), published in
1885, appeared to be an answer to that worry. From then on, ‘wakon-yōsai’
(Japanese spirit, Western knowledge), which succeeded ‘wakon-kansai’
(Japanese spirit, Chinese knowledge), became the major strategy for Japan’s
modernization. Japanese leaders set themselves the task of catching up
with the ‘civilized West’ (the USA, European countries), which by that time
had substituted for China as the main reference for differentiation
(Guillaume, 2001:86).
Within a relatively short span of time, Japan managed to become an
active player in the international system, with ‘a special status, which set
[it] distinctly apart from the rest of the non-white world’ (Winter, 1974, p.
185). By the time of the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–1905, Japan had
 The Pacific Review 5

achieved the rank of a major power with a vision to expand its own
empire (Pyle, 2007, p. 31).
After Japan’s victory in the Sino-Japanese War, fears about colonization
by the West almost completely disappeared. However, the same ‘triumph’
served to bring into sharp focus the fact that Japan was not at all treated
as another ‘Western’ nation.
Immediately after the victory, the so-called Triple Intervention occurred,
when three European powers—Russia, Germany, and France—called on
Japan to return the Liaotung Peninsula to China, which Japan had won
in the war. This demand ‘made such an indelible impression upon the
Japanese’ as arguably ‘no other single occurrence in the recent history of
Japan [did]’ (Iklé, 1967). After the triple intervention, anti-Western nation-
alism in Japan exploded in fury. By 1942, Japanese military power con-
quered most of East and Southeast Asia and declared ideals of pan-Asian
solidarity and the end of Western colonial influence (Beasley, 1987). ‘Asia’
was imagined as a ‘potential conduit for Western colonizers’ and became
“an object of desire in Japan’s self-proclaimed identity as a ‘liberator”’
(Tamaki, 2015).
While many share the view that the early 20th-century Japanese dis-
courses positioned Japan between Asia and the West, according to Kuniko
Ashizawa (2008, p. 589), Japan started to become increasingly ‘Asian’ in
the 1930s and 1940s, which resulted in the nation reaching a fatal impasse
and entering a devastating war that culminated in defeat. Hagström,
(2015), on the other hand, reminds us that it would be more reasonable
to read Japan’s war as part of its ambition to become a Western imperi-
alistic power—’that is, a “normal, civilized great power” by the yardstick
of the time—and hence that Japan chose the West’.
Indeed, on the one hand, Japan’s notion of ‘civilization’ and ‘normality’
were by-products of Japan’s socialization into ‘international society’ (Zarakol,
2010), and on the other hand, Japan’s war became possible due to the
perception that Asia was somehow sub-standard or ‘illegitimately different’
and therefore required guidance (Hagström, 2015; Tamaki, 2015).
Post-war Japan referred to the imagined West/the USA as a point of
reference for determining the facets of the Japanese identity that they
characterized as either ‘exceptional’ or ‘abnormal’ (cf Befu, 2001). However,
given Japan’s geographic proximity to the Asian continent, Japanese policy
makers must consider Asia while making decisions (Tamaki, 2015).
This dominant identity narrative has resulted in the ambiguity of Japan’s
national identity, which is defined by its ‘in-betweenness’, meaning that
post-war Japan is positioned between the West and Asia. As Ōe vividly
summarized in his Nobel Lecture in 1994, Japan is ‘split between two
opposite poles of ambiguity’, ‘belonging to neither the First nor the Third
World’ and ‘forever inscrutable to the West […] [and] isolate[ed] from other
Asian countries’.
In the postwar period, Japan was continuously portrayed as either
‘unique’ or ‘anomalous’. As Hagström, (2015) argues, ‘although narratives
6 S. INSEBAYEVA

of “exceptionalism” and “abnormality” are diametrically opposed, they are

both conditioned on a notion of ‘difference”’. As discussed above, the
image of Japan has been constructed as constantly in between two inde-
pendent selves—Asia and the West. One way to resolve this dilemma is
by shifting away from Asia to the West, leaving behind what is traditional
and forging ahead towards becoming modern. The continuous state of
suspension between emulation and rejection placed Japan in a liminal
position. ‘Liminal entities are neither here nor there; they are betwixt and
between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention
and ceremonial’ (Turner, 1969, p. 95). In this regard, Japan occupies a
liminal space, as it is neither Western nor Asian, and yet, it is both.

Japan’s ODA: ‘half-seated’ here and there

Japan’s ‘in-betweenness’/’exceptionalism’ is epitomized by its foreign aid
policy. Japan has always been treated as an outlier in the Western donor
community, even though it has been a member of the DAC since its
initiation (Sato, 2013, p. 3). Being ‘half-seated in the meetings’ and ‘feeling
a sense of incongruity with the DAC’ (Owa, 2017), Japan has often been
branded as either the oddity (Soderberg, 2010, p. 107) and the ‘rogue’ or
as a ‘unique’ and ‘lonely’ donor (Takahashi, 2005).
This is mainly because Japan’s alleged ‘oddness’/’uniqueness’ is con-
structed through differentiation vis-à-vis the presumed ‘normal’ DAC com-
munity. From the outset, the DAC was ‘a restricted membership committee’
to which other OECD members had to apply if they wished to fully par-
ticipate in its work. The DAC was created by and for ‘the free-world donors’,
which share ‘a sense of conscience—that aid is an obligation of the society
of free-world developed nations’ (Rubin, 1966, p. 19).
Japan’s case was special not only because it was the only non-Western
member (until South Korea’s admission in 2010) but also because while
it is common for DAC candidates to first become OECD members and
submit an application to join the DAC later, Japan joined the DAC before
it became an OECD member in 1964. For Japan, the DAC was a step to
gaining membership in the OECD, which symbolizes international recog-
nition and the status of a developed country.
The flip side of the coin, however, was the fact that Japan joined the
‘donors club’ at a disadvantage because its members were not equal in
regard to normative weight. After all, the DAC is about norms and identity.
Norms are defined as the ‘standard of appropriate behaviour for actors
with a given identity’, and their core feature is ‘oughtness’ (Finnemore &
Sikkink, 1998, p. 891). A logic of appropriateness forces actors to engage
in the types of behaviour that are expected of them due to their identity.
Regarding OECD DAC membership, the salient identities that drive the
process of normative diffusion tend to be ‘liberal’, ‘democratic’, ‘Western’,
and ‘civilized’ (Risse, Ropp, & Sikkink, 1999). Each donor has its own
 The Pacific Review 7

principles in regard to foreign aid but must also adhere to the agreed-
upon norms of the DAC, an institution that was established with the aim
of achieving consensus on a common set of standards. While the DAC
does not have powers of enforcement, as there are few regulatory norms,
it does encourage its member countries to comply with norms through
peer pressure.
This raises a further complication. Norms have the ability to differentiate
and construct ‘categories’ of actors depending on the level of their obser-
vance (Towns, 2010, p. 42–48). Thus, DAC normative order classifications
position and rank foreign aid providers vis-à-vis one another as norm
followers/norm breakers, compliant/non-compliant/, legitimate/illegitimate,
and it is the willingness of donor-countries to increase their status in a
social hierarchy that explain their compliance with global norms.
The DAC introduced a peer review system by which donors evaluate
each other’s performance to tighten restrictions on member-countries’
practices. The results of the evaluation are widely published as the ‘DAC
Peer Review’. Members that comply with the recommendations and pro-
cedures of the DAC are highly praised, while those that deviate are strongly
advised to improve.
Japan’s foreign aid policy has continuously been criticized in many
respects: its overemphasis on infrastructure projects, its ‘overly commercial’
aid programme, and its overconcentration on Asia, to name just a few
(see Pharr, 1994). These pressures to ‘improve’ and become ‘normal’ could
be conceptualized as a process of ‘socialization’—a ‘process by which states
internalize norms originating elsewhere in the international system’
(Alderson, 2001).
Japan has made a consistent effort to address the peer review recom-
mendations (such as taking into account debt sustainability and delegating
more responsibility to its implementation agency) (OECD, 2010). These
attempts, however, were seen to fall short of the DAC ‘gold’ standard.
Particularly relevant in this respect is Goffman’s (1963) theorization of
‘stigma’. He explained that ‘society establishes the means of categorizing
persons and the complement of attributes felt to be ordinary and natural
[or normal] for members of each of these categories’ (Goffman, 1963, p.
2). If a person possesses an attribute that makes him not what is expected
(‘the righteously presented demands’), he is then ‘reduced’ ‘from a whole
and usual person to a tainted, discounted one’ ‘of a less desirable kind’
(Goffman, 1963, p. 3).
Japan’s ‘oddness’ is evaluated against an established norm or standard
of ‘normality’, and therefore, within the DAC’s normative discourse, Japan
as the Other is constructed not as anti-Self but as less-Self.
As summarized in the DAC peer reviews (2003, 2010), ‘While Japanese
ODA policies cover many of the same issues as other donors and reflect
many key DAC guidelines and policy documents, there are also specificities
regarding what Japan wants to do and how it seeks to do it, with whom
and where’. Peer reviews, while constructing temporal social categories of
8 S. INSEBAYEVA

‘haves’ and ‘have nots’—responsible/rogue, developed/underdeveloped—

put Japan in a ‘liminal’ state of becoming a ‘proper’ Western donor.
Japan, as a country on this trajectory of becoming in a sense, legitimizes
the ‘normality’ of Northern/Western donors while also reproducing their
supremacy by constantly failing to complete the transformation. Hence,
liminality is constituted by the fact that this transformation is predeter-
mined to be perpetually half-complete, rather than by the possibility of
transformation (Rumelili, 2012).
Liminality provides the subject with the opportunity of ‘being neither
here nor there’ or ‘being betwixt and between positions’ (Turner, 1969). It
is important to stress that liminality is neither a pre-given characteristic
of actors nor a pre-existing social category. Liminality is ‘a realm of pure
possibility’ (Turner, 1967), ‘it is a fluid space, which can be occupied,
claimed and performed by actors. The social constitution of liminality
concerns the construction of these fluid spaces as well as the positioning
of actors within those spaces’ (Rumelili, 2012).
This discussion has an interesting implication, as it demonstrates that
the interaction between the self and other may produce not only multiple
kinds of ‘Other’ (Hopf, 2002) but also forms other than the ‘Other’, i.e.
liminality (Turner, 1969; Yanik, 2011; Rumelili, 2004).
Second, as Rumelili (2012) argues ‘liminal spaces are [inescapably]
constituted at the interstices of overlapping discourses on identity’. Norms,
ideas, and discourses that make up the social order in international pol-
itics, frequently yield alternative social categorizations that do not com-
pletely overlap (e.g. Asia/West, Northern/Southern donors). These
mismatched categorizations result in ‘conflicting Self/Other distinctions
and give rise to liminal positions that are partly Self and partly Other’
(ibid). Consider the image of Japan as ‘a strange creature between Asia
and the West’ that has the features of both (Wan, 1999). Japan left ‘Asia’,
yet it is not accepted by the West on ‘equal’ terms.
Here, it is important to stress that liminal actors may approach their lim-
inality in a variety of ways. While it is possible for liminal actors to reinforce
and reproduce the existing social categories, Japan adopts an alternative
strategy. This is because ‘without an assured political and security relationship
with the West, especially the United States, Japan could not safely pursue
its economic interests in the Asian Pacific region; without roots in Asia, it
would not count for much in the Western world’ (Saito, 1990). Japan is torn
between Asia and the West, and to enhance its international status and to
play a crucial role in world politics, it needs to get along with both.

Emancipatory Movement of the Global South and its legacy

for Japan’s foreign aid
In 1951, Japan signed the Peace Treaty, regained its status as a sovereign
state, and concluded the bilateral security treaty with the US. The
 The Pacific Review 9

following year, Japan submitted an application for UN membership, hop-

ing to secure admission with the support of Western countries (United
Nations, 1952).
However, Japan managed to become a member only in 1956. The USSR
vetoed the Japanese application several times (United Nations, 1952a;
United Nations, 1955). Therefore, for Japan on the road to UN membership,
the support of Afro-Asian countries became of paramount importance.
In the General Assembly (GA) of the UN, the Afro-Asian block demon-
strated a high voting cohesion, especially after 1955 (El-Khawas, 1970),
and by virtue of its numbers alone, it was able to exert an influence totally
disproportionate to its size or standing in the world community (Maslow,
1957). This was important because the 1950 ‘Uniting for Peace’ Resolution
(also known as the Acheson Plan) empowered the GA to play a more
prominent role should the Security Council (SC) be blocked by veto.
According to Chapter IV, Article 18, the decision of the GA on important
questions (including ‘the admission of new members to the United Nations’)
shall be made by a two-thirds majority (United Nations Charter, 1945).
This two-thirds majority requirement gave importance to the Afro-
Asian bloc.
Once Japan re-entered ‘international society’ in the 1950s, it was con-
fronted with a ‘new reality’ that was radically different from the situation
of the late 1930s—early 1940s. On the one hand, Japan was assigned a
prominent role in the US’s strategy of ‘containment’ in Asia. The US, which
changed its policy vis-à-vis Japan from ‘holding down’ in the immediate
post-war period to ‘holding up’ in the late 1940s—early 1950s, supported
Japan in becoming strong, stable, ideologically linked to the West and
economically dominant in Asia (Schaller, 1982). The expectation was that
Japan would not only oppose communist expansion in Asia but would
also combat the rising tide of anti-Western bias witnessed region wide.
On the other hand, Japan also had to focus on post-war clean-up and
work things out with Asian countries. The fact that the Cold War emerged
in parallel with the growth of anti-colonial movements and the formation
of newly independent nations in Asia made this task even more challeng-
ing (Hansson, Hewison, & Glassman, 2020). Thus, Japan had to re-approach
Asian countries (including its former colonies) as equal sovereign members
of the international community.
The opportunity to reengage with ‘new’ Asia appeared in 1955, when
India, Indonesia, Burma (now Myanmar), Pakistan, and Ceylon (now Sri
Lanka), collectively known as the Colombo Group, initiated the so-called
Bandung Conference.
The conference itself was actually a meeting of Third World countries
(29 Asian and African states and territories) with a record of being periph-
eral economies and sharing a history as former colonies or semicolonies
(as in the case of China). It was not simply a ‘physiologically and emo-
tionally Asian event’ (Brecher, 1968, p. 56). Bandung presented a profound
10 S. INSEBAYEVA

attempt to challenge the existing asymmetrical power relations between

the Global North and Global South (Weber & Winanti, 2016).
There were several reasons why Japan was invited to the Conference
and why it did not decline the invitation. Initially, Japan was not included
in the list of invitees drafted by India. There were still unresolved issues
between Japan and some Southeast Asian countries, as many of them
had not signed the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty. The post-war settle-
ments had been left to bilateral negotiations, and while a war reparation
agreement and a peace treaty were signed with Burma, negotiations with
the Philippines and Indonesia were stuck. However, even though India
was hesitant about inviting Japan, Pakistan, which was mainly concerned
with the possibility of increasing the influence of China and India in Asia
should they join forces, advocated for Japan’s partaking. India was very
keen to have China participate in the conference, and to prevent ‘anti-
China’ votes, India revoked its resistance to inviting Japan (No author, 1955c).
In the domestic context, Prime Minister Yoshida saw Japan as more
Western (Seiyou-teki) rather than Asian (Ajia-teki) due to the Cold War
thinking, and kept the country within the American orbit (particularly with
regards to the relations with the Soviet Union and Communist China).
Yoshida eventually fell from power in December 1954. Hatoyama of the
Japan Democratic Party, who advocated for more trade and diplomatic
relations with the Soviet Union and Communist China, succeeded him as
prime minister (Mendel, 1955). Almost immediately thereafter, the decision
to attend the Bandung Conference was made (Jones, 1955).
Japan was faced with two options: either to use the conference as an
opportunity to ‘return to Asia’ as envisioned by Prime Minister Hatoyama
or to demonstrate solidarity with the Western camp and play the role of
‘the leading anti-communist player’, as proposed by Foreign Minister
Mamoru Shigemitsu.
Eventually, Japan dispatched Tatsunosuke Takasaki, the Minister of State
and Chief of the Economic Deliberative Agency, who was a close ally to
Hatoyama and was in charge of the economic relationship with Asia. The
appointment of Takasaki was a symbolic choice indicating that the utmost
purpose of Japan was to take the conference as an opportunity to carry
out its independent economic diplomacy in Asia (No author, 1955a).
While publicly the US showed a lack of interest in the matter, never-
theless, it advised its ‘friendly’ nations to attend the meeting. The fact that
no ‘white’ powers attended Bandung made the American task of confront-
ing communism much more difficult. In addition, the US was determined
to prevent ‘the mobilization of any anti-Western and antiwhite movement’
that could bring into being a ‘segregated’ Asia (Jones, 2005).
The main concern was that ‘if the nations invited to Bandung, acquired
the habit of meeting from time to time without Western participation’,
eventually, it would be turned into ‘a very solid block of anti-Western
votes in the United Nations’. Therefore, to minimize the potential negative
effects, the US decided to ‘use friendly delegation to influence the outcome
 The Pacific Review 11

in a favourable direction’ (Jones, 2005, p. 856). In a sense, Japan was sent

to ‘speak’ with ‘Asia’ on behalf of the ‘West’.
However, due to a number of controversial questions (e.g. the question
of decolonization), Japan ‘was very cautious’ during the conference and,
‘because of the sensitiveness of the USA and some Asian countries’ sus-
picion of Japan’ (No author, 1955b), refrained from actively commenting
on political issues. The Bandung Conference was an occasion that bluntly
put the question ‘either the West or Asia’, demanding an explicit answer
to the puzzle Japan had been dealing with since the Meiji restoration.
Finding itself in a tough spot, Japan, nevertheless, managed to creatively
dodge this ‘false dichotomy’ question. In 1957, Japan declared three guid-
ing principles for Japan’s post-war foreign policy: ‘the centrality of the
United Nations’ (kokusairengou chuushin), ‘cooperation with liberal countries’
(jiyuu-shugi shokoku to no kyouchou), and ‘maintaining the position as a
member of Asia’ (Ajia no ichiin) (Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, 1957).

Japan’s ODA model: accommodation and hybridization?

While Japan’s stance at the Bandung Conference seemed ambiguous at
best, in fact, it was an opportunity for Japan to reiterate its position as
part of Asia and to demonstrate that it was no longer the aggressive
nation it had been.
However, it was not just Japan bringing ‘messages’ to Asia. The confer-
ence explicitly urged for greater South-South Cooperation and envisaged
the Afro-Asian unity and solidarity that would reshape international rela-
tions in the Global South. Consequently, the emancipatory movement in
the Global South had a profound impact on Japan’s foreign aid.
Since Japanese foreign aid model has already been extensively examined
elsewhere, the following section will merely highlight its key principles.
First, Japan has adopted the principles of ‘self-help’ (jijyo doryoku) and
‘aid on request’ (yosei shugi) as the central pillars of its foreign aid strategy.
In this context, ‘self-help’ refers to the notion that aid should be seen as
a supplement to recipient governments’ development efforts, not as pri-
mary source of growth. According to the ODA Charter (1992), locally driven
initiatives are imperative for beneficiaries to have a sense of true ownership
over their own development. Therefore, Japan only offers its assistance to
those nations that are ready to help themselves. Moreover, Japan places
high priority on technical cooperation and emphasizes economic infra-
structure development and the nexus of aid, direct investments and trade.
The conventional understating of this philosophy, which is reflected in
DAC reports, postulates that it is based upon Japan’s own experience
following the Meiji Restoration and particularly after WWI.
Moreover, according to the principle of ‘aid on request’, the recipient
country must make a request for aid from Japan after formulating and
prioritizing its national development program. The premise behind this
12 S. INSEBAYEVA

request-based approach to aid is that it would ensure Japan does not

violate the sovereignty of developing nations by determining which proj-
ects to fund. As part of its commitment to the principle of ‘non-interfer-
ence’ in global governance, Japan has also made an effort to offer aid
free of political strings. In addition, its national aid policy has highlighted
the values of equality, mutual respect and reciprocity (gokei-kankei).
It has been argued that Japan’s memories of imperialism and defeat
kept it from taking a firm stand on key global issues and contributed to
its reluctancy to meddle in others’ internal affairs. Whether this is accurate
or not, it must be mentioned that the still-present memories of the Nazi
regime did not defeat the Federal Republic of Germany and the German
Democratic Republic from tying development assistances to specific polit-
ical objectives (Howell, 1994).
In either case, it is reasonable to conclude that this justification has
been used to rationalize Japan’s behaviour as a foreign aid provider. This
does not imply that international and domestic circumstances can be
disregarded, rather, the concern here is that the discussion takes Japan’s
actual foreign aid behaviour as a given, which goes in line with the think-
ing that ‘a certain policy decision was predictable given a particular set
of circumstances’ (Doty, 1993, p. 298). The question of how these practices
were made possible, however, remained unanswered (Wendt, 1987).
As Doty (1993) points out, ‘[t]he possibility of practices presupposes
the ability of an agent to imagine certain courses of action. Certain back-
ground meanings, kinds of social actors and relationships, must be already
in place’.
This statement is a useful point for the argument of this research.
During the Allied Occupation period, Japan’s international identity was
obliterated for some time. In the post-war period, Japan confronted two
conflicting developments: Western countries tried to maintain their influ-
ence over developing countries through development and aid provision
(e.g. the Colombo Plan, the OECD-DAC framework), while in Asia, countries
pushed for solidarity against any foreign interference, seeking to pursue
truly independent political and economic policies of their own.
The ‘West’ expected that Japan would master the ‘aid-giving’ skill as
‘Northern’/Western donors, which had historically been operating under
a North-South logic. According to this perspective, aid from ‘a rich and
powerful North’ has to be transferred to ‘the poor and marginalized South’
(Williams, Meth, & Willis, 2009). The OECD-DAC approach is based on the
premise of charity as a moral duty, a moral obligation to assist the “less
fortunate Global South” by transferring Northern “superior” knowledge and
suspending reciprocity (Insebayeva, 2022). Here, the North/South divide
is utilized metaphorically to emphasize ‘a chain of interconnected socio-
economic and political claims that sustained a global landscape of nor-
malized hierarchies’ (Lauria & Fumagalli, 2019).
‘Asia’, instead, urged Japan to adopt a regional approach guided by the
‘Bandung Spirit’. The call for ‘Asian’ solidarity was reflected in the Final
 The Pacific Review 13

Communique of the 1955 Bandung Conference. The communique empha-

sized principles of equality and solidarity (3), mutual respect for sovereignty
(2), non-interference in internal affairs (4), abstention from exerting pres-
sures on others (6b), and the virtue of mutual benefit and recognition of
reciprocity (9). These principles laid the foundation for the South-South
Cooperation (SSC), which endorsed ‘a vision of emancipatory, state-led
development with the Global South working in solidarity against the
Global North’ (Engel, 2019, p. 219). Special attention was given to the
importance of the transfer or exchange of financial and human resources,
technology and knowledge among countries of the Global South (Ministry
of Foreign Affairs, 1955). As Aneja (2018) argues, these principles of sharing
knowledge based on experience in fact help to ‘foster a common Southern
identity, one based on solidarity, and its distinctiveness from exploitative
North-South Relations’.
Facing a tough contest over its aid policy, Japan has created a sui
generis ODA model by accommodating both the OECD-DAC- and ‘Bandung
Spirit’-inspired SSC norms within its foreign aid policy.
Previous studies noted that in the earlier years, Japan preferred to use
the term ‘economic cooperation’ (keizai kyouryoku) rather than ‘aid’ (enjo)
(Jain, 2016). This is quite understandable. Ideas and philosophy of foreign
aid shared by most OECD-DAC members originated from the Christian
tradition of providing ‘help-as-gift’, when one, who has resources, gives it
to the other, who lacks it.
While altruistic principles motivating aid have often been empha-
sized, the fact that the gift of (Western) aid affirms an unequal rela-
tionship between the donor/giver and the receiver has also been
pointed out. It has been argued that aid symbolically implies ‘domina-
tion, or a practice that signals and euphemizes social hierarchies.’
(Hattori, 2001).
The ‘foreign aid as charity’ approach (Saidi & Wolf, 2011) was not nec-
essarily appreciated by Asian nations, which shared the sentiment that
there was an urgent need to ‘terminate foreign domination’ and strengthen
‘mutual support and actual cooperation between all Asian countries’
(N.N, 1948).
Considering that an emphasis on Asia has been a prominent feature
of Japan’s foreign aid (Rix, 1993), Japan couldn’t ignore the fact that Asian
nations wanted to assert their independence and autonomy, and ‘nor more
wanted to be playthings of others’ (N.N, 1948).
As a result, despite being a fully-fledged member of the OECD-DAC
camp, Japan nevertheless has developed its own approach to official
development assistance (ODA) (seifu kaihatsu enjo).1
Occupying a liminal position as a foreign aid donor, Japan had to find
a way to get along with both Asian and Western nations. As a result, the
normative dominance of the DAC was weakened through hybridization
and localization.
14 S. INSEBAYEVA

Many core norms of Japanese aid lie outside of the established DAC
normative regime (top-down, asymmetric donor-recipient relationship with
conditionalities) while overlapping with those of the South-South coop-
eration framework (partnership for mutual benefit, non-conditionality,
non-interference in domestic affairs).
However, it is important to keep in mind that South-South cooperation
emerged as a specific response by newly independent states in the Global
South to decades of an exploitative ‘North-South order’. In this context,
the principles of South-South cooperation help construct a political project
to foster solidarity by crafting a common ‘Southern’ identity based on the
important distinction between North-South and South-South relations
(Aneja, 2018).
While Southern providers are a highly heterogeneous group with diverse
practices (Renzio & Seifert, 2014), what unites them is their willingness to
maintain their Southern identity (Chin & Quadir, 2012; Fiddian-Qasmiyeh
and Daley, 2018), which is often juxtaposed with that of ‘Northern’ Others.
In other words, ‘South-South cooperation and its underlying principles are
historically associated with the Non-Aligned Movement and anti-colonial
and anti-imperialist struggles around the world’ (Fiddian-Qasmiyeh & Daley,
2018). Against this background, self-identification with Southern partners
is rather problematic for Japan, considering that it was among ‘the powers
that oppress[ed] the Third World’ (Ōe, 1988, p. 359).
The bottom line here is that Japan can be singled out as not belonging
to any group. Japan does not feel completely at home with either Northern
donors or Southern donors. After all, ‘what constitutes the West more than
geography is a linguistic family, a belief system and an epistemology’
(Mingolo, 2000).

Conclusion
When discussing Japan’s approach to aid, the principal focus has been on
Japan’s own development, its first experience with aid, and external and
internal pressures. Many scholars have argued that Japan’s aid is different
because the origin of Japan’s ODA was in war reparations to neighbouring
Asian countries. The reluctance of Japan to policy conditionality and its
cautious stance about interfering in recipient countries’ domestic affairs
is usually explained by the ‘notion of sin’, which focuses on the salience
of memories of war and conflict. As a result, Japan has been considered
to be an ‘odd’ donor, which lacks a voice of its own in the international
aid debate.
Contrary to these explanations, the evidence presented here suggests
that Japan’s identity is key to understanding its foreign aid practices.
Consequently, the research yields several important findings.
First, to address the question of how Japan’s construction of the ‘sui
generis’ ODA model was made possible, it is necessary to return to the
 The Pacific Review 15

state of affairs in the 1950s, when Japan re-entered ‘international society’

after its defeat in World War II. Post-war Japan faced two opposing devel-
opments: the West attempted to uphold its control over developing coun-
tries by providing foreign aid, while in Asia, countries urged solidarity
against foreign interference. While Japan has been a US ally, the impact
of the emancipatory movement of the Global South on Japan’s ‘recipi-
ent-to-donor’ transition was crucial.
Eventually, Japan established its own aid philosophy and policy by
accommodating both OECD-DAC- and ‘Bandung Spirit’-inspired SSC
norms, which has implications for the international aid regime.
Occupying a liminal position as a foreign aid donor, Japan weakened
the normative dominance of the DAC through hybridization and local-
ization. As such, Japan has started to be perceived as an ‘odd’/’unique’
foreign aid donor because its ‘oddness’/’uniqueness’ is evaluated
against an established norm or a standard of ‘normality’, that is, the
OECD-DAC ‘gold standard’.
Second, the article highlights that even though Japan shares some key
features with Southern partners, it does not share a common identity with
them, which is based on the important distinction between North-South
and South-South relations. Thus, Japan continues to challenge the existing
North/South binary by offering an alternative aid modality.

Note
1. In recent years, Japan has mostly been using the term ‘development cooperation’ (kaihatsu
kyouryoku).

Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Tim Bunnell, Jamie Davidson, Patrick Quinton-Brown, Eve
Warburton, Amit Julka, Michelle Tsay for insightful comments on earlier drafts
of this article. Parts of ideas for this paper came from the discussions at the
workshop “Identity Politics and Foreign Policy: Non-Western Perspectives” or-
ganized by the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore (NUS).
Special thanks goes to Nafissa Insebayeva for providing invaluable, construc-
tive feedback, which I greatly appreciated. My gratitude also goes to Institute
of Social Science (the University of Tokyo), the Nippon Foundation Human
Resource Development Project (University of Tsukuba, Japan) and Nazarbayev
University (Kazakhstan). Finally, I want to thank two anonymous reviewers and
the entire team of the Pacific Review, Michael Hart in particular, for support
and cooperation.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
16 S. INSEBAYEVA

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