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Paper short abstract

Despite falling out with the Soviet Union and China, I argue that the Japanese Communist Party's continuous solidarity with Southeast Asian countries after the Bandung Conference transcends the core process of "self-formation" to Yoshimi Takeuchi's proposed concept of "Asia as Method".

Paper long abstract

Previous studies on the Japanese Communist Party (JCP) and its international activities focused mainly on how it functioned as the Japanese "counterpart" of the then Soviet Union and China. These neglected the party's autonomous practices in building solidarity in Southeast Asian countries. On April 18, 2025, the JCP commemorated the seventieth anniversary of the Asian-African Conference, commonly known as the Bandung Conference, through its newspaper, Shimbun Akahata, highlighting its significance and its role as an ally to Southeast Asia's anti-colonial struggle. History has witnessed the post-Bandung activities of the Japanese Communist Party asserting its position against the growing influence of what it called the period of US Imperialism. Even after the fall of the Soviet Union and China's economic reform under Deng Xiaoping, the Japanese Communist Party maintained its global solidarity, distinct from ruling communist parties. Often dismissed as "imitators" of Eurocommunism in Japan, "revisionists", "lost cause", or "moral compass", by implementing a historical approach in collected materials, this study counterargues that the transformation of the Japanese Communist Party from an asset of the Communist International in Asia to an independent leftist party transcends the core process of "self-formation" to Yoshimi Takeuchi's proposed concept of "Asia as Method" (Takeuchi, 2005). Furthermore, I argue that this rerouting of political tactics serves as a "reference point" for interrogation (Chen, 2010) towards understanding the mobilities of non-state actors that function beyond conventional diplomatic relations.