Satoshi Amako, Shunji Matsuoka and Kenji Horiuchi(eds), Regional Integration in East Asia: Theoretical and Historical Perspectives (Tokyo, New York and Paris :

United Nations University Press, 2013), xxx + 356 pp, US$40.00 (Paperback), ISBN 9789280812220

Abstract

This book, which is produced from the Tokyo-based United Nations University Press as the main publisher and distributed to the Washingtonbased Brookings Institution Press as a retail outlet, is actually the result of a five-year long research project completed at the Global Institute for Asian Regional Integration (GIARI) under Waseda University’s Graduate School of Asia-Pacific Studies (GSAPS) (frankly, from where the reviewer earned his highest degree), and largely financed by the so-called Center of Excellence (COE) Program of the Japanese Government Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). The coeditors invincibly presume that their volume is an apex of onerous and rigorous study, which unfurls the boundary of a state-of-the-art research as a significant component in the field of Asian regional integration at a deadlock now despite the past rash of regional integration groupings for various circumstances (including historical, political, strategic, economic, social and cultural) at the beginning of the 21st century. But the reviewer does not think so highly of it in all of their purposes, contexts and approaches.