Concrete Dreams: Practice, Value, and Built Environments in Post-Crisis Buenos Aires

ed States—which condemned the coup— and against China. But Thailand was Japan’s major investment hub in the region. Wanting to stand with the United States on the coup was something of a policy innovation. In the past, the Japanese government had tended to be ‘‘accommodating’’ of Thailand’s military coups and its military juntas and governments (p. 177). In 2014, the Japanese government initially criticized the Thai military’s intervention, but soon worked its established channels to develop and maintain its relationship with the military junta. Indeed, the junta itself was quick to use Thailand’s tycoons as a link to Japan’s corporations and business associations to ‘‘normalize’’ relations and to keep Japanese investment flowing into the country. Aizawa’s account is of the Japanese Chamber of Commerce as a conduit from the military junta to the government in Tokyo. For Japanese business, political stability trumped regime type. For the Japanese government, relations with Thailand were normalized and continued after the coup much as they had before it. The Courteous Power is a timely and welcome publication, shining a light on Japan’s role in the region in a time of international security challenges posed by the rise of China for the U.S.-led coalition that has dominated the region since the end of the (first) Cold War. The book’s subtitle, emphasizing the ‘‘Indo-Pacific,’’ reflects U.S. strategy in the region, and the book provides an excellent summation of where Japan now fits in the region, the challenges for Japan’s regional policy, and how the Japan-U.S. alliance will continue to be important for the countries of Southeast Asia.