Newsletter No. 250
April 25, 2006

 

INDONESIAN AMBASSADOR TAKES A PARTING SHOT AT JAPAN

The Indonesian ambassador in Tokyo, Abdul Irsan, has been on assignment at his current post for three years, but is expected to leave Japan at the end of this month. We have seen how Indonesian Vice-President Jusuf Kalla was rather outspoken during his visit to Tokyo in January, and how Jakarta has taken a tough line over negotiations on the MRT project in the Indonesian capital. Now, Ambassador Irsan has spoken out in a similar vein.

Irsan has published a new book in Indonesian and Japanese. The Indonesian version was published last year and is entitled “Politik dan Reformasii di Japang (Politics and Reform in Japan).” The updated Japanese version is “Indonesiajin Gaikokan no Me kara Mita Nippon (Japan Through the Eyes of an Indonesian Diplomat).”

Although I have not yet obtained a copy of this book myself, the mainstream press makes it clear that the book is filled with sharp criticisms of Japan -- not what you would expect from a book written by an ambassador.

In terms of history, Irsan expresses his annoyance that the war museum at Yasukuni Shrine states that Indonesia gained its independence in 1949, when Jakarta’s position has long been that August 17, 1945, marked the real beginning of national independence. He is also annoyed that many young Japanese seem to think that Indonesia gained its independence due to Japanese efforts.

He echoes VP Kalla’s criticism by noting that, “Japan is preoccupied with furthering its own economic interests and it encourages Southeast Asian countries to compete with each other for aid and investment from Japan.”

He also criticizes the way that U.S.-Japan alliance has been operating.

As the Daily Yomiuri puts it, “Irsan warns that Japan’s policy of siding with the United States globally and regionally may cause a situation in which the position of Indonesia and that of Japan can hardly be synchronized.”

In the words of the Jiji Press, Irsan complains that “many new Japanese leaders in the political and business fields who received Western education tend to look at other Asian countries only through the eyes of the West.”

Readers of the Shingetsu Newsletter or some of my academic papers will know that I myself have made this latter point many times, although I don’t think that this is a new phenomenon, as Ambassador Irsan seems to believe. I can trace it back to the 1880s.

Perhaps the main significance of Ambassador Irsan’s book is that it demonstrates that too close an alignment with the United States (especially in the Bush era) could damage Japan’s relations not only with Islamic radicals and “anti-American” states like Iran, but even those Muslim countries that are generally described as being “moderate.”