‘Better to be a chicken’s head than an ox’s tail’: Japanese envoy diplomacy in the mediation of Konfrontasi (1965)

ABSTRACT This article examines a lesser-known episode of the Cold War in Asia, namely Japan’s mediation in the Konfrontasi crisis between Indonesia and Malaysia, focusing on Prime Minister Satō’s appointment of a special envoy, Kawashima Shōjirō, in spring 1965. Drawing on multi-archival research in Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States, it shows how Japan’s envoy diplomacy initiative was shaped by unilateralism, partisanship and a brazen diplomatic style that defied ‘low-profile’ expectations and revealed regional leadership aspirations. Kawashima’s (eventually unsuccessful) endeavour played out as a remarkably ‘interventionist’ initiative, mirroring domestic tensions over the definition of Japan’s post-war role in Asia.


Introduction
The 'Konfrontasi' standoff between Indonesia and Malaysia (1963-6) was in full swing when, in spring 1965, the newly elected Japanese prime minister Satō Eisaku appointed a veteran lawmaker, 75-year-old Kawashima Shōjirō, as a special envoy to mediate the dispute. This article focuses on this little-known diplomatic episode, drawing on multiarchival research in Japan, the United Kingdom and the United States. While eventually unsuccessful, Tokyo's envoy diplomacy in Konfrontasi offers a valuable window into the tensions, aspirations and expectations that accompanied Japan's definition of its post-war role -before more systematic approaches, such as the Fukuda Doctrine, would emerge as a diplomatic blueprint for its policy towards Southeast Asia. 1 Japanese envoy diplomacy in Konfrontasi came about as the product of two competing visions for post-war Japan, which coexisted within the same political party, the dominant Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). The mainstream vision, embraced by the liberal forces that had coalesced around Premier Yoshida Shigeru after the Second World War, prioritised Japan's commitment to the United States-sponsored Cold War regional architecture, casting its role as a reliable, responsible junior ally. The other, held by more leadership had already represented 'a challenge to American foreign policy', Konfrontasi overlapped with a delicate phase of the Cold War in the region, as the conclusion of the brutal Malayan Insurgency campaign was followed by the escalation of the conflict in Indochina. 5 Throughout the dispute, the UK honoured the Anglo-Malaysian Defence Agreement by dispatching military assistance to Borneo, while the Information Research Department, the Foreign Office's propaganda arm, was actively involved in instigating anticommunist activities in Indonesia. 6 The United States, having just wrapped up its covert involvement in rebellions in Sulawesi and Sumatra (1956-61), was similarly colluding with those reactionary forces within the Indonesian army that would soon topple Sukarno. 7 Japan's envoy diplomacy in Konfrontasi coincided with the apex of the conflict. By 1965, the disputing parties had reached a stalemate due to their unwillingness to bend to the opponent's preconditions to further talks: the withdrawal of British troops from Borneo for Indonesia and the total cessation of guerrilla activity for Malaysia. 8 Mindful of the Americans' heightened Cold War sensitivities in Southeast Asia, Prime Minister Satō in his first official visit to Washington in January 1965 vowed to President Lyndon B. Johnson that Japan would do 'all it can to assist in these [Konfrontasi] problems' to support the US effort in Vietnam. 9 Envoy diplomacy must have appeared to Satō as a relatively low-cost option with potentially high returns. Deploying a special envoy would have not only sent a strong message of Japan's commitment to the United Statesled Cold War order in Asia, but also created the conditions for Satō to claim ownership of a historic diplomatic breakthrough in case of success -or to maintain a degree of distance from a highly volatile situation in case of failure. In its inception, therefore, Japan's envoy diplomacy served first and foremost as a public-relations device, both internationally and domestically. Satō even hinted to the journalists accompanying him to the United States at the possibility of a Japanese envoy for Konfrontasi -a promise he felt he could not backtrack from, after Sukarno's withdrawal from the United Nations a mere few days later -as 'he would appear ridiculous if, in spite of what had appeared in the press [on envoy appointment], he did nothing'. 10 Satō picked Kawashima Shōjirō, vice president of the ruling LDP, as his special envoy to mediate in the dispute. Kawashima carried out two missions to Jakarta, in April and August 1965, on occasion of the tenth anniversary of the Bandung Conference and of the Indonesian Independence Day celebrations respectively. While the second trip, shortly preceding the military coup of 30 September 1965, amounted to a merely symbolic visit, Kawashima's first mission unfolded as an ambitious diplomatic tour of Southeast Asia divided among six days in Jakarta (14-20 April), two days in Kuala Lumpur and one final stop in Bangkok. 11 Crucially, even though Kawashima nominally had only representational duties at the Bandung Conference anniversary celebrations, he would exceed the formal remits of this role, taking advantage of the flexibility it provided. 12 Behaving more like an 'executive agent' of Premier Satō rather than a symbolic 'special representative' of the government, Kawashima's role came with implicit expectations of a mediatory function, no precise instructions and, thus, an ample margin for individual action. 13 Japan's envoy diplomacy, therefore, often oscillated between spurts of Kawashima's personal initiative and the attempts at supervision (if not outright damage control) by professional diplomats. In fact, Foreign Ministry officials filed Kawashima's mission under 'mediation work' (chōtei kōsaku 調停工作) -just as they complained about his penchant for '[going] further than he should [. . .] for political reasons of his own'. 14 Kawashima Shōjirō (川島正次郎, 1890-1970) was a seasoned lawmaker, a self-made man who had risen through the ranks of the party thanks to personal charisma and exceptional people skills. Known as the 'god of elections', Kawashima succeeded in retaining his Diet seat from 1928 until his death (with only a self-imposed seven-year intermission during the US occupation). 15 More a Machiavellian backroom operator than a technically minded bureaucrat, he held relatively few cabinet posts throughout his career, and his appointment as vice president of the LDP in 1962 cemented his reputation as the powerful 'eternal number two' of Japanese politics. 16 Most importantly, as examined later, Kawashima was the Japanese politician with the closest personal relationship with President Sukarno of Indonesia.
Before delving into Kawashima's attempt at mediation, it is necessary to consider what his involvement meant in terms of Japan's self-appointed Cold War identity of 'bridge' between East and West, First World and Third World.

Japan in the Cold War: the myth of Kakehashi
On the eve of his first trip to Southeast Asia in April 1965, special envoy Kawashima galvanised the crowd of politicians and journalists gathered at his send-off party at the prime minister's residence with an optimistic forecast: his mission would mark 'the beginning of a new foreign policy for Japan'. 17 His confidence was not entirely unwarranted. By 1965, in the midst of an economic boom and riding the success of the 1964 11 MOFA Asia Bureau, 'List of representatives attending the ceremony for the 10th anniversary of the Asia-Africa Conference', A'.7.1.0.12-7-2 (Vol. I), Diplomatic Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, Tokyo (henceforth DA-MOFAJ Tokyo Olympics, the Japanese felt that their country had finally been 'reborn' after the war. 18 However, for Prime Minister Satō (elected in November 1964), the foreign and domestic policy agenda was less rosy. He juggled difficult normalisation talks with South Korea, hurdles to his electoral promise of Okinawa reversion, and growing popular discontent with Japan's support of the United States' adventurism in Vietnam. 19 His decision to appoint a special envoy departed from his predecessor Ikeda Hayato's reliance on summitry. 20 Kawashima's mediatory endeavour in Konfrontasi -perhaps due to its underwhelming results -has been largely overlooked in the diplomatic history of modern Japan, being ignored in Anglophone scholarship. 21 It is also minimally examined in the Japanese, with a few notable exceptions in recent years. 22 Yet, Japan's bid at mediation represented a significant moment in its post-war foreign policy, as its first unilateral political initiative in Asia since the end of the Pacific War. Peacemaker was a role that Japan had adopted since the 1955 Bandung Conference, where it reframed itself as the natural guarantor of peace in the region by virtue of its experience as the only country victim of atomic bombing. 23 This new identity was enshrined in the concept of kakehashi (架け橋): a 'bridge' capable of fostering peace in the region while connecting the Free World with the Third World. It is on this kakehashi identity that Satō centred his entire speech at the National Press Club in Washington DC during his official visit in January 1965. 24 The 'bridge' concept was so successful that, in the 1990s, it was repurposed as the basis for the multilateral, UN-centred foreign policy that underpinned Tokyo's post-Cold War commitment to 'mediation diplomacy' (chūkai gaikō 仲介外交). 25 In fact, some scholars have seen in Japan's mediation in Konfrontasi a precedent for its involvement in UNsponsored peacekeeping operations in Southeast Asia (such as in Cambodia and East Timor) in the 1990s and early 2000s. 26 Some accounts of Japanese mediation in Konfrontasi also frame it within a purported 'consistently multilateral' approach to Southeast Asia, or cite it as an example of Tokyo's 'honest broker' role providing 'good offices to facilitate a peaceful resolution'. 27 Such post hoc interpretations of Japan's mediation in Konfrontasi as the diplomatic duty of a responsible international stakeholder, however, risk uncritically reinforcing a self-serving national narrative.
Instead, this paper offers an alternative interpretation of Japanese mediation as a form of 'soft intervention' signalling a claim over a sphere of influence. My analysis borrows from Saadia Touval's theory of 'biased mediation', according to which mediation need not necessarily be impartial or inspired by a high purpose, but is rather often initiated by a self-interested mediator. 28 By relying on personal networks and policy conceptualisations that transcended not only the pre-war/post-war divide but also the rigid ideological frameworks of the Cold War, Japan's mediatory endeavour in Konfrontasi resembled more closely the approach of an aspiring regional power, rather than that of a selfless arbiter.
Tokyo's involvement in Konfrontasi offers a valuable insight into post-war Japan's soul-searching, as mediation required a delicate balancing act between two competing political visions for Japan's role in Asia. While Premier Satō upheld the mainstream conservative line of the 'Yoshida School' following the economic-centric, United States-reliant precepts of former premier Yoshida Shigeru, special envoy Kawashima belonged to a different church. A vocal critic of Yoshida, Kawashima was a staunch ally of Kishi Nobusuke (the former Manchukuo administrator and prime minister from 1957 to 1960), whose vision for Japan's foreign policy did not reject the US alliance, but emphasised the urgency for autonomy and national prestige. Kishi'sand by association, Kawashima's -strain of conservatism presented a distinctively emotional tone, describable as 'national greatness conservatism', which translated into an acute preoccupation with issues of power and national pride. 29 Indonesia had figured prominently in the diplomatic outreach of Kishi, who had finalised the war reparation agreements with Sukarno in 1957, casting Japan's regional role as the guarantor of anticommunist economic development in Southeast Asia. 30 Among the pro-Indonesia faction of the LDP, Kawashima was Kishi's second-in-command and the eponymous leader of the 'Kawashima Lobby', an informal yet influential group of politicians and businessmen who variously profited from the war reparation business during the Sukarno era. 31 This 'national greatness conservatism' was not incompatible with the earlier-described 'bridge' narrative. As argued by Reto Hofmann, the kakehashi discourse offered a malleable framework that appealed to mainstream Japanese liberals, like Premier Satō, who were eager to see Japan operate as the 'third pillar' of the United States-led global order, just as to more hawkish politicians, like Kishi and Kawashima, who believed in Japan's twofold mission to mediate between East and West -while 'civilising the  31 Nishihara, The Japanese and Sukarno's Indonesia, 106-7. former' -and to speak for the rest of Asia. 32 In this vein, Kawashima presented his Southeast Asia mission as the embodiment of 'supra-party diplomacy' (chōtōha gaikō 超 党派外交): a proactive, compact foreign policy outlook roughly equivalent to the US principle of 'politics stops at the water's edge'. 33 Chōtōha gaikō promised to be the remedy to what many conservatives perceived as the chronic ailment of post-war Japan: rinji gaikō ('expedient diplomacy' 臨時外交), the ad hoc, fragmented foreign policy informing post-war Japan's passivity and indecisiveness on the world stage, summarised by Kawashima as 'staying silent unless having a fire lit under one's feet'. 34 These two coexisting interpretations of Japan's identity as a kakehashi determined, in turn, different views of Japan's role in Cold War Asia. One, embodied by Premier Satō, upheld the Free World's security architecture in Southeast Asia, casting Japan as a pacifist brokerage power and a reliable regional 'manager' in the eyes of its US allies, while the other, championed by Kawashima, responded to a desire to reclaim Japan's lost Great Power role, prioritising long-held strategic interests. In the case of Konfrontasi mediation, the balance between the two tilted in favour of the latter during 1965, when Kawashima enjoyed enough leeway to leverage his domestic authority in his role as special envoy. This is not to say that Japan's mediation in Konfrontasi was a one-man show. Satō had openly sanctioned Kawashima's ambitions of 'supra-party diplomacy', and the idea of 'autonomous foreign policy' (jishu gaikō 自主外交), rooted in the US-Japan alliance but aimed at advancing Japan's own security capabilities, was a key part of his own foreign policy vision. 35 'Better to be a chicken's head than an ox's tail' ('Keikō gyūgo' 鶏口牛後) -Premier Satō himself quipped during his first trip to Washington in January 1965. 36 Even S-Operation, Satō's personal advisory group tasked with defining the strategic trajectory of his administration, welcomed Japan's involvement in mediating the dispute as a desirable 'political action' in Asia, recommending the pursuit of 'individual diplomacy' (kojin gaikō 個人外交) through an envoy. 37 Konfrontasi, however, simply did not rank high enough on Satō's foreign policy agenda, which at the time was squarely occupied by the Okinawa reversion question. Foreign Minister Shiina Etsusaburō's peripheral involvement in the matter was similarly justified by his focus on the thorny normalisation talks with South Korea. This left Kawashima exceptional room for individual initiative -often to the dismay of the professional diplomats he was expected to coordinate with. As summed up by the British Embassy in Jakarta in summer 1965, 'what Kawashima thinks about Indonesia today, Japan thinks tomorrow'. 38 The envoy thus served as a catalysing force for those pre-existing biases and attitudes within Japanese foreign policy-making circles that would lend themselves to his 'interventionist' approach, as examined in the next sections.

Mediation as an exclusive diplomatic right
Japan's approach to Konfrontasi was informed by the implicit assertion of Japan's exclusive diplomatic rights over mediation of the dispute. This assumption echoed prewar narratives of paternalistic mentorship according to which only Japan, as the most advanced country in Asia, had a special responsibility and exclusive duty to Southeast Asia. In 1976, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' (MOFA) Asia Bureau explicitly referred to Southeast Asia as 'Japan's constituency [senkyoku 選挙区], as Africa is for the European Community and Latin America for the US'. 39 This stance was reinforced by a parallel assumption of Japan's moral, if not racial, responsibility to mediation. The British impression was that the Japanese acted as if 'they as orientals [sic] have a better idea of how to go about it'. 40 Japan's claims of some spiritual connection with Southeast Asia were openly laid out in 1964 by the then foreign minister, Ōhira Masayoshi, who in an International Affairs article argued that the 'nations of Asia' follow policies that 'cannot be reasoned out and hurriedly solved by a Western rationalistic approach'. 41 In a speech to the Diet in January of the same year, Ōhira presented Japan as being 'in a position to understand the desires and difficulties of these neighbor countries' in virtue of its successful history of industrialisation. 42 As a result, Japan's approach to Konfrontasi was markedly paternalistic. When it came to Sukarno, the Japanese government embraced the so-called 'proper guidance doctrine' (Sukaruno 'zendō' ron スカルノ善道論), based on the belief that Japan's benevolent influence could steer Indonesia away from the communist camp. 43 Ambassador Shima Shigenobu in London put it more bluntly: they were dealing with nothing short of a 'problem child' [in English in the original]. 44 Scholars have observed how the use of family-related vocabulary in Japan's post-war relationship with Asia betrays the persistence of pre-war hierarchical conceptualisations of its regional identity, with Japan acting as a 'leader or mentor for its children or younger siblings'. 45 Special envoy Kawashima  management of the conflict, instead of turning it into a multilateral regional endeavour, became apparent when another hopeful Asian mediator, Thailand, came to the fore.
Thailand had emerged as a go-between as early as 1963. 48 It consolidated that position in 1964 when Indonesian foreign minister Subandrio formally asked the Thai government to act as observer in the (short-lived) cease-fire negotiated by Attorney General Kennedy in January 1964. 49 In early 1965, the Thai channel was revived by the prospect of a secret summit in Bangkok that Thai Foreign Minister Thanat Khoman was planning for May -with US blessing but without Japanese knowledge. Japan caught on this development only thanks to the courtesy of British diplomats, who, realising that the United States had no intention of briefing their Japanese allies, in early 1965 resolved to share confidentially information to save Satō a 'somewhat embarrassing position'. 50 Besides being at odds with what some scholars have described as the strengthening of a 'consultative relationship' within the US-Japan alliance in the mid 1960s, the United States' unwillingness to share such crucial information with the Japanese also speaks to the climate of general mistrust for concerted solutions during Konfrontasi. 51 In fact, Thai mediation was deliberately understated, following Thanat's wish for it to play out as 'businesslike secret discussions without wide publicity'. 52 Secrecy was key to Thanat's mediatory style, and one of the things that frustrated him most was Malaysian premier Abdul Rahman's leaks to the press, which often provided an excuse for Sukarno to back off from talks citing Malaysian bad faith. 53 'Diplomacy is not conducted in the marketplace', lamented Thanat. 54 56 On their part, Japanese diplomats had long been observing with concern Thanat's unusual 'sense of responsibility' towards the dispute. 57 Thanat himself reassured them that he had no intention of 'maintaining a monopoly over the resolution of this issue'. 58   level meeting (with Indonesia's Subandrio and the Philippines' Salvador Lopez) in November 1963 would have cut Japan entirely out of the management of the dispute. 59 The Bangkok Summit of 5-10 February 1964 further proved to the Japanese the risks of leaving Thanat too much leeway. As Ambassador to Indonesia Furuuchi Hiroo reported, during that summit Thanat repeatedly 'stepped out of his role as mere chairman', showing a clear partiality towards Malaysia. 60 The decision to move the following summit to Tokyo (in June 1964) was precisely due to many participants' concerns about Thailand's partiality. 61 It would be an exaggeration to claim that Thailand's pro-Malaysian tendencies were the only trigger to Satō's decision to take a more proactive approach to Konfrontasi. However, the rivalry between Japan and Thailand was an open secret: the Malaysian Head of Chancery, Abdullah Bin Ali, even 'wondered whether Sukarno was deliberately playing off Japan against Thailand' in spring 1965. 62 Kawashima's own statements hint that the Thai channel might have at least contributed to heightening Satō's sense of urgency for dispatching an envoy. In the records of the meeting between Kawashima and Malaysian premier Abdul Rahman of 20 April 1965, the Japanese special envoy obliquely referred to the fact that Satō's hesitation at appointing an envoy lasted only until Thanat's efforts towards mediation materialised. 63 Even though Kawashima, during his subsequent stopover in Bangkok, requested 'Thai cooperation in continuing efforts to reach [a] peaceful settlement', Japanese diplomats reminded their US counterparts: 'our interests are not the same as those of Thailand'. 64 Satō's envoy appointment, therefore, can be interpreted as a textbook attempt at 'insulating the conflict from interference', a common strategy employed by biased mediators when competing actors threaten to hinder their goals. 65 The envoy option had been on the table for Japan since Premier Ikeda's official visit to Jakarta in late 1963. Pressed on the matter by Sukarno in January 1964, Ambassador Furuuchi explained that, in principle, Japan had always been willing to send an envoy, but this would depend on 'time and occasion': he noted that Japan was not ready to make a gesture of such 'international significance', and even justified Ikeda's unwillingness to appoint one by citing his fear of prompting a 'rivalry' with the visit of special envoy Kennedy. 66 Evidently, when faced with a less mighty rival such as Thailand, Japan did not show the same qualms. On 15 February 1965, Satō vowed that 'Japan would go all out to reconcile the two contending parties'. 67 Japan's determination to serve as the exclusive 'manager' of Konfrontasi betrays an aspiration to exert control over a perceived sphere of influence, as it presented -in   a watered-down fashion -its two key features: control and exclusion. 68 Japan in the mid-1960s undoubtedly lacked the power projection capabilities (due to its constitutional constrains on military involvement abroad) and the bargaining power (due to its fraught relations with many countries in the region) to establish a full-fledged hegemonic sphere of influence in Southeast Asia. 69 Nonetheless, in the case of Konfrontasi, Japan was widely perceived as wanting to replace the UK's dominant role and 'fill the vacuum of leader of Asia's non-Communist nations', as the Malayan Times put it. 70 As illustrated in this section, it was ready to do so by pursuing a strikingly unilateral initiative.

The fiction of super partes mediation
The idea of a partisan mediator sounds like a contradiction in terms. According to the classic literature on conflict mediation, a mediating state 'should have no interest in the dispute other than achievement of a peaceful settlement'. 71 However, acting as a mediator can serve political purposes that often transcend the immediate resolution of the conflict, as first argued by political scientist Saadia Touval: for a self-interested, 'interventionist' mediator, 'effectiveness is usually a secondary consideration'. 72 The hastiness and incoherence of Japan's mediatory efforts in Konfrontasi in 1965 are glaring examples of this.
Japan did not have a clear mediation strategy. Its best articulated policy option was that supported by the Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs Ōda Takio, whose plan envisaged the creation of a Four Power Conciliation Commission (to be chaired by Japan) and a plebiscite in the disputed territories of Sabah and Sarawak. 73 The so-called 'Ōda Plan', however, was categorically rejected by Malaysia, due to it failing to demand the cessation of hostilities from the Indonesian side as a precondition to the resumption of talks. By early 1965 its own author was openly asking US and British diplomats for 'any bright ideas that he could pass on to his politicians' in order to come up with an alternative. 74 In Tokyo, the mediator counted more than the mediation. Japanese journalist Hirasawa Kazushige thus commented on Kawashima's appointment: 'It is like putting the cart before the horse to choose a mediator before formulating a concrete mediation plan'. 75 After speaking with Satō, former British secretary of state Patrick Gordon-Walker drew the conclusion that 'the Japanese have little idea about what should happen if and when the two sides meet; their primary objective is to bring them together'.  On top of that, the choice of Kawashima was justified, rather than by his (nonexistent) diplomatic credentials, by his uniquely close ties to Sukarno. 77 The two men had struck up a friendship in 1962, on the occasion of the Asian Games in Jakarta, when Kawashima (then minister in charge of the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games), refused to cave in to the calls of the international community to withdraw the Japanese delegation from the competition following Indonesia's arbitrary exclusion of the athletes from Taiwan and Israel, advocating instead for the 'separation of politics and sports' (seisupo bunri 政 スポ分離). 78 Kawashima's unconditional support for the Asian Games, an event that in Sukarno's eyes represented the coronation of Indonesia as the beacon of Third-Worldism, had won him the ever-lasting appreciation of the Indonesian president, who started addressing him as 'brother' (kakamu). 79 Sukarno had explicitly requested to have Kawashima act as a go-between in Konfrontasi. In early December 1964, he dispatched Chow Chi Mo, a trusted middleman in Japan-Indonesia relations since the wartime era, as his special envoy to Tokyo to plead for Kawashima's involvement in mediating the dispute. 80 Kawashima met Chow in Tokyo three times from December 1964 to February 1965, eventually promising him that he would 'do all he could [in Japanese, "break his bones"] to solve the Indonesia-Malaysia dispute'. 81 Kawashima was credited with being the 'driving force' behind Satō's unusually long premiership. 82 He could also leverage his position as head of the Kōyū Club, the party faction to which Foreign Minister Shiina also belonged, in order to persuade Satō to dispatch him. 83 Personal grudges also played in his favour. After enduring the humiliation of having Sukarno ignore his pleas to reverse his UN withdrawal decision, Satō was unenthusiastic about accepting the invitation to the Bandung Anniversary celebrations in April 1965 and was happy to send Kawashima in his placeto the chagrin of Sukarno, who would have preferred a head of state to attend. 84 Satō might have disliked Sukarno (he believed him to be a 'truly untrustworthy person'), but Japan's approach to mediation was tailored exclusively as a function of its relations with Indonesia, which represented a 'special' relationship for Tokyo. 85 As the fulcrum of Japan's a key provider of natural resources fuelling the Japanese imperial 77 Kawashima's political career had been entirely focused on the domestic, with very few appointments in the realm of foreign policy. It was only in his last years as LDP vice-president that he assumed more representational roles abroad, often as a 'reward' for a distinguished career, travelling widely as a government representative (to India and Burma in September 1965; the Middle East in February 1966; the Soviet Union in May 1967; and South America in August 1968). In none of these instances, however, did he pursue a proactive personal initiative as he did in Konfrontasi. 78  machine during the Second World War, Indonesia had served as the 'Second Manchukuo' of Japan's Greater Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. 86 In 1965, the MOFA Asia Bureau still viewed Indonesia as the country in the region 'with the greatest potential in terms of both human [jinteki 人的] and material [butteki 物的] capital'. 87 Sukarno had been an enthusiastic ally of the Japanese for most of the 1940s and, after independence, a friendly diplomatic interlocutor and eager recipient of Tokyo's financial aid. After losing access to the Chinese market due to the Communist takeover of 1949, Southeast Asia -and Indonesia -had emerged as the main target of Japanese investments (channelled mainly through war reparation agreements), making the region a fundamental springboard for Japan's post-war economic reconstruction. Additionally, as Japan's industrial recovery relied on increasingly larger oil imports from the Gulf, safeguarding the sea transport lanes controlled by Indonesia became a foremost priority for Japan's economic and security strategy. 88 For the most cynical observers, therefore, Kawashima was nothing but the spokesman for the 'boys in the back room who [saw] their Indonesian investments threatened' by Konfrontasi. 89 As for Malaysia, the Japanese government had not hesitated to recognise the newly independent state in 1963. Nevertheless, Japan shared many of Sukarno's frustrations with the modalities of its creation, as its sovereignty over Northern Borneo had not been based on self-determination. 90 Japanese diplomats blamed the UK for its sloppy handling of the decolonisation process: Ambassador Furuuchi lamented the 'stiff way of thinking' of the British and their 'truly inadequate' supervision of the popular consultation in the disputed provinces. 91 Conversely, the frequent use of the term 'the Malaysia Question' (Marēshia mondai マレーシア問題) in MOFA documents and by Japanese media greatly irritated the British, who perceived this formulation as implicitly questioning the legitimacy of Malaysia's existence. 92 In spite of the Japanese government's close ties with Indonesia and Kawashima's personal proximity to Sukarno, Malaysia was strikingly open to Japanese mediation. Premier Abdul Rahman even referred to Japan as being 'eminently qualified to play role of mediator as she is friendly to both countries and sincerely desires peace'. 93 As observed by Touval, 'awareness of the mediator's bias [does] not prevent his acceptance by the less-favoured side'. 94 For Malaysia, mediation still represented a more desirable option than direct negotiation (which had reached a stalemate by 1965) or, worse, military escalation. The UK, however, saw a Japanese envoy as a potential threat to their interests in Southeast Asia. As one British diplomat put it -mirroring Japan's reaction to Thai mediation described in the previous 86  neither an irrational choice nor a political whim, but rather a response in line with Sukarno's idiosyncratic anticolonial nationalism, with no expansionist ambitions. 112 The Japanese assessment of Sukarno's ideological affiliations was so diametrically opposite to the British that, in Tokyo's view, Sukarno was, rather than a radical leftist facilitating a communist takeover, a guarantee against Indonesia irreversibly turning red. 113 The distinction made by the MOFA Southeast Asia Division was between the Indonesian government's 'façade' and its 'real intentions' (naishin 内心): while Sukarno 'has long been calling for a strengthening of [Indonesia's] friendship with Communist China at a superficial level, it can be seen as a fact that down inside he has been extremely cautious when it comes to the People's Republic'. 114 MOFA had reasons to be confident of this interpretation: after all, Japan had unrivalled access to the top echelons of the Indonesian government, with the Japanese ambassador to Jakarta Saitō Shizuo, a former colonial officer at the Military Government Planning Division in Java during the 1940s, enjoying an exclusive direct channel to Sukarno. His reports, known as 'Saitō news', were often the only reliable source for Western diplomats to stay abreast of the ever-fluid domestic politics of Indonesia. 115 Even in the most heated phases of Konfrontasi, Japanese diplomats did not refrain from arguing that it was only understandable that Sukarno was seeking external support from China, given that Malaysia was doing the same from the United Kingdom. 116 Special envoy Kawashima even dared to suggest, in conversation with none other than Malaysian premier Abdul Rahman, that Sukarno's Konfrontasi was a defensive, rather than aggressive, policy: 'I personally believe Indonesia would never become Communist. But because of the differences between Malaysia and Indonesia, Malaysia obtains support from Britain and thereby causes Indonesia to lean toward the Communists'. 117

Kawashima's 'bulldozer diplomacy'
Satō's decision to appoint a special envoy offers an additional clue to Japan's postimperial attitude towards Konfrontasi. Special envoys, and their dispatch in cases of international conflict mediation worldwide, have historically served as conduits for a country's claim of influence over a foreign territory. 118 During the Cold War, the United States and the USSR often appointed special envoys to signal and assert their influence over geopolitical hotspots, such as Latin America or the Balkans respectively. Appointing an envoy was a rather unusual course of action for a country like Japan, whose foreign policy in the early post-war period has been widely characterised as pursuing a cautious, 'low-posture' (tei shisei 低姿勢) diplomatic line. 119 To do so at the peak of Konfrontasi was even more daring. 120 Kawashima risked finding himself in an awkward spot vis-à-vis the United States, as Sukarno's violent antineo-colonialist rhetoric often took anti-US undertones -so much so that Thailand's Thanat walked out in protest during Sukarno's inaugural speech at the Bandung anniversary ceremony. 121 Additionally, a mere few weeks before his April trip, the Indonesian parliament had passed a pro-North Korea resolution advocating the withdrawal of foreign troops from the Korean peninsula. 122 In early 1965, Kawashima himself had seemed to be 'somewhat reluctant to place his prestige on the line' to negotiate with Sukarno, especially considering how his previous attempts at steering the Indonesian leader towards moderation (during the Asian Games and Olympics controversies described earlier) had produced little results. 123 In spite of this challenging diplomatic environment, Kawashima's style as a special envoy was everything but understated. In his numerous interviews ahead of his departure, he fed the press with high-sounding descriptions of the goals of his mission -which ranged from the predictable ('reassert-[ing] [Japan's] commitment to the Ten Principles of Bandung' and arranging for the provision of development aid) to the staggeringly ambitious -'laying the ground for mediation in the Malaysia conflict' and meeting with Chinese prime minister Zhou Enlai, also in attendance at the Bandung Anniversary celebrations. 124 Kawashima's first mission in April 1965 proved to be a minefield of diplomatic blunders -many of which, however, were entirely self-inflicted. First, Kawashima let Sukarno believe that Japan was considering establishing relations with the People's Republic of China a few hours ahead of their joint luncheon with Zhou (organised by Sukarno). 125 Then, a few days later in Kuala Lumpur, Kawashima nearly caused a diplomatic scandal when he told Abdul Rahman that he had received permission from Sukarno to convey his impression that Indonesia would stop all guerrilla activity. 126 This message came across to the Tunku as if 'President Sukarno had given [Kawashima] the assurance that acts of aggression would cease at the commencement of [his] meeting with President Sukarno' [emphasis added]. 127 It is unclear whether Ultimately, Japan's mediation followed a script of 'mediation for mediation's sake', whereby the mediator's benefits -from Satō's show of commitment to the United States to Kawashima's dream of 'supra-party diplomacy', passing through the economic stakes of Japanese business in Indonesia safeguarded by the Kawashima Lobby -outweighed the stated goal of conflict resolution.

Conclusion
For all his talk about Japan's 'new' diplomacy, Kawashima's mediation in Konfrontasi found an unmercifully ironic ending. While his dispatch to Southeast Asia in April 1965 promised to usher in the proactive, independent diplomacy of a 'reborn Japan', in practice, Tokyo's envoy diplomacy gamble proved to be nothing but a novel iteration of that very same rinji gaikō ('expedient diplomacy') that politicians like Kawashima had so harshly criticised, amounting to a botched mix of wishful thinking, bad timing and lack of long-term planning. Other factors contributed to undermining the effectiveness of Japan's mediation in Konfrontasi, such as the silent disapproval of MOFA, the relatively low position of the issue in Satō's agenda of foreign policy priorities, and even the lack of intraparty discipline within the LDP. 146 While underwhelming in its execution, however, Japan's attempt at mediation was ambitious in its inception, revealing enduring aspirations of national prestige and influence projection. This article re-examined Japan's envoy diplomacy in Konfrontasi as a variation on the most frequent of Cold War themes -third-party intervention -by teasing out its three key features. The first was Japan's unilateral approach to conflict mediation, which was bolstered by a paternalistic claim to regional leadership that assigned Tokyo the exclusive management of Konfrontasi. Secondly, a pragmatic approach aimed at safeguarding Japan's own geostrategic interests as much as honouring personal loyalties, which translated into MOFA's non-conformist assessment of Sukarno's ideological leanings, as much as into an openly partisan stance in favour of Indonesia. Thirdly, the use of an executive tool of diplomatic power projection such as envoy diplomacy, which Kawashima pursued in a brazen, transactional and risk-taking style.
A testament to the importance of individual agency and personality in foreign policy, Kawashima's endeavour offers an insight into the peculiar modes and methods of diplomacy in the Cold War, as well as into the competing political visions that coexisted in post-war Japan. These were embodied, on the one hand, by Premier Satō's desire to prove his government's commitment to the United States' Cold War architecture in Southeast Asia, and, on the other, by Kawashima's revindication of Japan's leadership role in the region. Ultimately, Japan's botched attempt at mediation in Konfrontasi was a reflection of its ambiguous kakehashi ('bridge') identity, torn between latent Great Power aspirations and post-war low-profile expectations -one piece in the country's soul-searching for its role in Asia during the Cold War.