The Limits of ‘Quiet Dialogue’

Japan’s historical influence over Burma has waned since the days it helped Aung San in his independence struggle

The apparently deliberate shooting of Japanese journalist Kenji Nagai at the height of the September demonstrations in Rangoon angered people in his homeland and prompted the Tokyo government to cancel a ¥552 million (US $4.7 million) aid project for a Rangoon university.

Bo Latya, Bo Setkya and Bo Teza (Bogyoke Aung San) in Japan in 1941

Some believe this government response was not strong enough and asked whether Japan would finally join with Western nations and impose economic sanctions against Burma.

Despite indignation over Nagai’s death, this is unlikely. Since the collapse of the Ne Win socialist regime and the seizure of power by the State Law and Order Restoration Council in September 1988, Tokyo has fashioned a Burma policy that rules sanctions out. This policy was stated succinctly by a foreign ministry official speaking to a public forum in Tokyo in 2001.

Concerning relations with Burma, Ms Taeko Takahashi, director of the Japanese Foreign Ministry’s First Southeast Asia Division, divided countries into three categories: first, there were Western governments that placed the highest priority on democracy and human rights and implement sanctions and harsh criticism; secondly, Burma’s Asian neighbors, which do not want to interfere in Burma’s internal affairs and hope change can be encouraged through expanding economic relations; thirdly, the Japanese government, which had announced the adoption of “a position that places importance on human rights and democracy as a matter of course” but which shuns sanctions, preferring to “speak as friends.”

Ms Takahashi posed the questions: “What are the expectations of the international community? What needs to be done for Myanmar [Burma] to be accepted into the international community? These are things we are in a position to discuss quietly.”

Since 1988, “quiet dialogue” between Japan and Burma has involved Japanese expressions of moral support for Burma’s opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi (who is quite well-known and popular in Japan), and the selective use of economic incentives in the form of official development projects (known as ODAs) to encourage the junta to improve its behavior.

The Japanese government was thought to have been instrumental in securing the release of Suu Kyi from house arrest in July 1995, and followed it up with a gift of ¥1.6 billion ($15 million) for the renovation of the Institute of Nursing in Rangoon, indicating that further progress in democratization would receive similar rewards.

Compared to China, Singapore and Thailand, Japan’s economic profile in post-socialist Burma has been rather low, but it remains the largest donor of country-to-country ODA, as it was during the 1962-1988 Ne Win era.

Between 1990 and 2002, Tokyo gave Burma ¥68 billion ($573 million) in debt relief grants and funded the completion of certain loan projects that were approved before 1988. When the Burmese government paid off some of its yen loans, the Japanese government returned the money, telling Burma to use it to buy goods and services from Japan.

While Ne Win was in power, Japan had more influence inside his isolationist state than any other foreign country, owing to the large volume of its ODA (some $1.94 billion disbursed between 1970 and 1988, mostly in the form of low-interest project loans) and sentimental bonds based on wartime ties.

Imperial Japan established the Burma Independence Army, forerunner of the Tatmadaw, in 1941. Ne Win was a BIA veteran, as was Aung San Suu Kyi’s father,  Aung San.

Quiet dialogue between “friends” seemed to be a plausible way for its Southeast Asian neighbors to prod Burma along the road to gradual economic and political liberalization. The policy was hobbled by contradictions, however.

Powerful business interests inside Japan wanted full economic engagement with SLORC, including resumption of aid at generous pre-1988 levels.