Japan's reputation in Asia has improved dramatically since 1974, when students in Bangkok and Jakarta greeted a visiting Japanese prime minister by burning him in effigy. Who in those days could have imagined that:

• in 1989, virtually all of Asia's heads of state would converge on Tokyo to attend the funeral of the late Showa emperor, the human symbol of Japan's brutal occupation during World War II?

• a year later, Prime Minister Mahathir of Malaysia would call for a Japan-centered trading bloc that looked to some like a peaceful ghost of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere?

• in 1992, Thailand would prod its neighbors in Southeast Asia to support legislation in the Japanese Diet to allow Japan to dispatch soldiers to foreign lands for the first time since the war?

Indeed, the country that once generated hostility and suspicion today inspires respect and admiration in many parts of the region. One Thai official went so far as to describe his country's relationship with Japan as “a happy marriage.”

Viewed against the long backdrop of history, this rapid rise in Japan's standing in Asia seems miraculous. It is not. It is the product of a deliberate, largely successful strategy to embrace the region in a complex web of personal, governmental, and corporate ties – all united under the ubiquitous banner of keizai kyōryoku, or economic cooperation.

This statement, we readily admit, begs a big question: Who designed and carried out this Japanese strategy of economic cooperation?