TIMUR DADABAEV Japan’s Search for Its Central Asian Policy Between Idealism and Pragmatism ABSTRACT In contrast to the claims that Japanese foreign policy increasingly shifts toward realist and pragmatic modes of engagement, this paper argues that Japanese foreign policy is largely trapped between idealist and pragmatic criteria in its Central Asian (CA) policy. Japan’s policy in CA is thus a hybrid of policies that are not properly understood in CA, nor can they be explained to the public at home. KEYWORDS: foreign policy, Japan, Central Asia, Official Development Assistance, energy resources INTRODUCTION Relations between the Central Asian (CA) states and Japan have always had very promising potential. Even when the CA states were part of the Soviet Union, the majority of the populations in the CA republics had rather sympathetic views toward Japan. These views could be explained by various reasons, including interest in Japan’s modernization, technological innova- tion, and preservation of its traditional culture, as well as certain similarities between the mentalities of the Japanese and CA publics. In addition, after World War Two, several thousand Japanese prisoners of war (POWs) were brought into some of the republics such as Uzbekistan and Kazakhstan, where they participated in the postwar reconstruction process. The construc- tion projects to which these POWs contributed favorably impressed the populations of these republics regarding the quality of the POWs’ labor. 1 TIMUR DADABAEV is Associate Professor of International Relations at the Graduate School of Social Sciences and Humanities, University of Tsukuba, Japan, and concurrently Adjunct Associate Pro- fessor, Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, University of Tokyo. The author wishes to thank anonymous reviewers for their comments and useful suggestions to improve the earlier version of this article. Email: <dadabaev@chiiki.tsukuba.ac.jp>. 1. For detailed accounts of this phenomenon, see Kyoko Nakayama, Uzbekisutan no Sakura [Sakura of Uzbekistan] (Tokyo: KTC Chuou Shuppan, 2005). Asian Survey, Vol. 53, Number 3, pp. 506–532. ISSN 0004-4687, electronic ISSN 1533-838X.  2013 by the Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved. Please direct all requests for per- mission to photocopy or reproduce article content through the University of California Press’s Rights and Permissions website, http://www.ucpressjournals.com/reprintInfo.asp. DOI: AS.2013.53.3.506. 506