Japan's Policy Stance on East Asian Neo-Regionalism: From Being a “Reluctant”, to Becoming a “Proactive” State

This article is a theoretically grounded empirical contribution aimed at shedding light on Japan's policy stance on East Asian neo-regionalism. It aims to examine the recent region-building process in East Asia. The dynamics in East Asia suggest that regional institutionalization, brought about by norm diffusion based on the idea of neo-regionalism, is likely to follow a progressive and evolutionary trajectory through the institutionalization of the Association of Southeast Asian Nation (ASEAN) + 3 (South Korea, Japan and China). It provides a wide spectrum of regional-integrationist perspectives in order to offer as full a picture as possible of Japan's role in promoting regional integration in East Asia. The key finding of this article is that Japan has changed from a being “reluctant”, to becoming a “proactive” state in the context of regional collaboration in East Asia.