Southeast Asia is now being stripped naked. Bewildered by the toxicants of modernization and buffeted by the gales of international politics, Southeast Asia has lost its sense of direction and suffers unfathomable despair. In this context Japan has become a strong target of criticism. This criticism is not wholly superficial, and if Japan is both to further its own interest and to contribute to this, area of the world it must understand and cope with that criticism. The most important feature of the anti-Japanese criticism in Southeast Asia is that it is based on “despair,”