The ASEAN Regional Forum in Japan's Current Policy

During the past few decades Japan has been extensively establishing connections with international actors and searching for the appropriate partners for effective cooperation. Since the 1990s ASEAN Regional Forum was considered as one of the key platforms in this field. ARF was founded in 1994 and since that Japan has had big expectations over this partnership. Japan's policy towards the ASEAN Regional Forum has changed repeatedly during the period 1994 - present and the future of this cooperation is currently uncertain. The purpose of this research is to identify the role of the ARF in Japan’s contemporary policy, to observe the dynamics of the interaction between Japan and ARF, positive and negative outcomes and possible vectors of this cooperation. In the study some particular methods are used: retrospective analysis to retrace the history of Japan’s-ARF collaboration, comparative analysis to qualitatively evaluate the dynamics, discourse analysis and situation analysis. This study will fill the research gap in investigation about ARF-Japan’s cooperation and provide a deeper understanding of the role of ASEAN Regional Forum in Japan’s policy and their possible points of contact the future. The results of the research can be useful for a wide audience, from the academic and research environment to the government level.