Japan’s cooperation with the Pacific Islands region faces challenges. The first, most overt, challenge is the rise of China as an alternative aid and trade partner. Another relates to Japan in essence denying or minimising its historical role in the region and taking actions that Pacific Island Countries feel do not comport with its stated goal of respecting their sovereignty.
From 9 to 12 February 2024, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa visited Fiji and Samoa to attend a high-level ministerial meeting of foreign ministers from the Pacific Island Countries and Japan on the sidelines of the Pacific Islands Forum. She held a series of bilateral meetings with counterparts from Fiji, Samoa and the Marshall Islands, while laying the groundwork for the upcoming Pacific Islands Leaders’ Summit 10 (PALM 10).1
The PALM meeting is a once-in-three-year event held between the leaders of Japan and Pacific Island countries, and is scheduled to be held in July 2024. Thirty years of high-level dialogue between Japan and the island countries of the Pacific Ocean affords a good vantage point from which to look back on Japan’s history in the region as well as its future prospects in the age of US–China great power competition. It may plausibly be argued that Japan’s engagement in the region, while substantive, has not addressed Pacific Island countries’ core needs, making new thinking in Tokyo necessary.
According to the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Pacific Islands were important as sites of migration, colonial rule and resource extraction.2 Several of the Pacific Islands host significant populations of people descended from Japanese indentured labourers, who were dispatched to work there in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Subsequently, at the turn of the century when Japan became a powerful military player, it was given trusteeship of former German colonies in what are now the countries of Palau, Micronesia, the Marshall Islands and the Northern Mariana Islands under the so-called South Seas Mandate. Newly re-christened the Japanese Mandate for the Governance of the South Seas Islands (Nihon Inin Tōchi-ryō Nan'yō Guntō), the islands were governed by a mixture of civil and military officials. Even after Japan lost the Mandate after its withdrawal from the League of Nations in 1935, it continued to hold on to the islands, enforcing a strict blockade preventing foreign ships from entering waters surrounding its territory.3
During the Second World War, several fierce battles were fought in the region between Imperial Japanese forces on the one hand, and the United States armed forces on the other. The battles of Guadalcanal, Saipan and Kwajalein were particularly bloody, and marked key milestones towards the eventual defeat of the Japanese Imperial forces. In 1947, the United Nations revoked Japan’s claims to the islands and placed them under US trusteeship.
After the war, as Japan recovered its economic vitality, its interest in the region turned to resource extraction. In particular, the seas around Pacific Island countries provide Japan with seafood exports. Approximately 40 per cent of the bonito (katsuo) and tuna (maguro) consumed in Japan is said to be sourced from the region.4 Both fish varieties are staples of the Japanese diet, with bonito in particular a vital component underwriting the taste and flavour profiles of Japanese food. The region also hosts several key Sea Lanes of Communication (SLoC) connecting Japan to points south and west.
Japan–Pacific Island Countries Cooperation
Japan’s post-war political engagement with Pacific Island countries can be re-traced to 1987, when then Foreign Minister Tadashi Kuranari, in a speech entitled ‘Working Towards the Pacific Future Community’, outlined what subsequently has come to be known as the Kuranari Doctrine. This doctrine outlines five basic principles governing Japan’s engagement with the Pacific Island Countries. These principles are:
The second and fourth of these principles was subsequently operationalised by Japan’s active participation in meetings of the former South Pacific Forum (SPF), known today as the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF), since 1989.
In 1997, Japan extended its own institutional framework onto the Pacific Islands region with the inauguration of the first PALM summit. It also set up a dedicated organisation, the Pacific Islands Centre (PIC) in Tokyo, to serve as a hub of coordination between the two sides. Since then, Japan has been investing significant amounts of aid into the region, with over US$ 249.96 million worth of cumulative aid disbursed in 2022.6
The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) has also been playing a key role in the region, with emphasis on developing primary infrastructure, assisting in sustainable development and promoting people-to-people cooperation. Sectors such as healthcare, infrastructure, disaster prevention and human resources development have been important focus areas.
Japan’s Engagement with Pacific Island Nations
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20.03.2024
Japan’s cooperation with the Pacific Islands region faces challenges. The first, most overt, challenge is the rise of China as an alternative aid and trade partner. Another relates to Japan in essence denying or minimising its historical role in the region and taking actions that Pacific Island Countries feel do not comport with its stated goal of respecting their sovereignty.
From 9 to 12 February 2024, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa visited Fiji and Samoa to attend a high-level ministerial meeting of foreign ministers from the Pacific Island Countries and Japan on the sidelines of the Pacific Islands Forum. She held a series of bilateral meetings with counterparts from Fiji, Samoa and the Marshall Islands, while laying the groundwork for the upcoming Pacific Islands Leaders’ Summit 10 (PALM 10).1
The PALM meeting is a once-in-three-year event held between the leaders of Japan and Pacific Island countries, and is scheduled to be held in July 2024. Thirty years of high-level dialogue between Japan and the island countries of the Pacific Ocean affords a good vantage point from which to look back on Japan’s history in the region as well as its future prospects in the age of US–China great power competition. It may plausibly........
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