Japan Rediscovers The Pacific

Unparalleled wealth brings new opportunities for co-operation

THIS month’s Special Report focuses on the new role Japan is playing and hoping to play over coming decades in the South Pacific.

It is a salutary look at a nation that, despite having the largest amount of available capital in the world, has made errors in aid that the region has come to expect of faceless development agencies and distant Great Powers. Not that any inherently Japanese factor is to blame: it is merely a

reflection of the astounding ignorance of “our part of the world” that has alternately annoyed and saddened the in habitants of the region Japan calls Oceania.

What is particularly interesting is that though Japan has in the past veered between seeing itself as part of Asia and as some kind of offshore manufacturing plant for North America, it is now looking southward and to its east; to the vast ocean that is already Japan’s largest single des tination for tourism. It would seem the beauty and peace of the Pacific are as important to work-obsessed Japanese as the opportunities it offers for investment.

The South Pacific has a unique opportunity to look the gift horse in the mouth, and by so doing to tailor the as sistance offered so that entire island states will benefit.

Such a prescription encompasses more than development aid, of course: recognising that Japan wishes to diversify its industrial strength. Pacific leaders are for once able to dictate which industries will fit into their cultural require ments, and on what terms training, infrastructure, trade advantages Japanese investment will be made welcome.

Fiji has provided a partial model already, accepting Japanese input and with it the knowledge that Japan will derive the major profit from that input. Yet Fiji has im posed stringent conditions on all investment that Japan, with respect for national and cultural discipline, is pre pared to honour. While other island nations are wrestling with the preservation of traditional values at the same time as they are being courted by the West, they would do well to look closely, slowly and with considerable care at the effectiveness of Japan’s new ’look south’ policy.