Japanese Anti-Piracy Initiatives in Southeast Asia: Policy Formulation and the Coastal State Responses‪.‬

Introduction Maritime piracy concerns many nations, but it particularly alarms Japan, a state vitally dependent on the flow of resources through the pirate-infested waters of Southeast Asia. Although Japan possesses highly capable maritime forces, its constitution restricts the Self Defence Forces (SDF) from operating as a traditional military. Moreover, the Japan Coast Guard (JCG), not part of the SDF, is also restrained by antimilitarist prohibitions. However, since the mid-1990s concern over the piracy threat has triggered changes in Japan's outlook and led it to initiate significant efforts aimed at leading a regional effort to cooperatively eradicate piracy in Southeast Asia. Japan's initiatives have met with mixed success. The most radical ideas, proposals which envisioned standing ocean-peacekeeping fleets conducting multinational patrols in both territorial and international waters, made very little progress. However, at a bilateral level, Japanese initiatives have been quite successful. For example, the JCG has conducted joint training exercises with six Southeast Asian states and Japanese aid programmes have trained and equipped forces in all of the coastal states.