For Southeast Asia, trust in Japan runs deepest where China presses hardest and breaks down where neutrality is a point of pride.
Analysts say that dynamic, revealed in an annual survey released earlier this month, explains why Vietnam and the Philippines both see the East Asian nation as a trusted partner while Indonesia, a country that has long prized non-alignment, is uncomfortable with Tokyo’s deepening embrace of Washington.
Trust in Tokyo is highest in the Philippines (77.3 per cent), Brunei (72.9 per cent), Cambodia (72.0 per cent) and Vietnam (67.9 per cent), according to the latest annual State of Southeast Asia survey conducted by the Singapore-based ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute.
Across all 11 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, trust in Japan outweighed distrust. Yet public opinion took a turn in Indonesia, as confidence slid from 61.5 per cent in 2025 to 47.9 per cent this year.
Analysts say the strength of Japan’s standing in Vietnam and the Philippines, in particular, reflects the reality on the water. Both countries face direct Chinese pressure in the South China Sea – Manila through vessel clashes and maritime friction, Hanoi through strategic resource blockades – and both have come to regard Japan as a security partner that delivers without demanding anything in return.
“Japan’s support, unlike that of some other major powers, is generally seen as coming with ‘no strings attached’,” said Nguyen Truong Giang, a Vietnam-born PhD candidate at Ritsumeikan Asia Pacific University’s Graduate School of Asia Pacific Studies.
The implicit contrast is with China, whose assistance critics say routinely comes with conditions including endorsement of Beijing’s core interests.
Japan’s support … is generally seen as coming with ‘no strings attached’
Nguyen Truong Giang, international relations researcher
But it is not the same story everywhere. Cambodia, for example, has grown steadily closer to China in both trade and military terms in recent years, yet its confidence in Japan ranks among the highest in the region.
“Japan has accumulated real legitimacy in Cambodia, and that tends to be resilient even when Phnom Penh’s broader geopolitical posture leans elsewhere,” said Aniello Iannone, a lecturer in Southeast Asian politics at Indonesia’s Diponegoro University.
He said Tokyo’s “steady, non-coercive” approach over the years had won it Phnom Penh’s trust.
Japan has also channelled billions of dollars of grants and loans into Cambodia – more than 622 billion yen (US$3.9 billion) as of 2022 – with a focus on post-conflict reconstruction, social infrastructure and economic development.
Cooling confidence
Indonesia’s declining trust in Japan reflects a more layered set of grievances, but non-alignment sits at the heart of them.
Jakarta has long regarded strategic neutrality as a foreign policy cornerstone and a Tokyo visibly tightening its security ties with Washington is a Tokyo that is harder to regard as a genuinely independent partner.
Japan has ramped up military spending and pursued a more proactive defence posture in recent years – exploring a possible constitutional revision to to explicitly codify the Self-Defence Forces (SDF) and end a long-standing standing debate over their constitutionality and deepen joint military interoperability with the US.
For Indonesian elites who take non-alignment seriously, that trajectory is troublesome.
“A Japan perceived as deepening its security integration with Washington makes neutrality harder for Indonesia to sustain, regardless of Tokyo’s intentions,” Giang said.
Economic perceptions have compounded the unease. As China has expanded its footprint in Indonesia’s green energy transition – pouring investment into electric vehicle battery supply chains, high-speed rail, solar manufacturing and renewable energy projects – Japan’s comparative lack of action has been read “a lack of strategic commitment”.
“It makes Tokyo appear less indispensable than it once was,” Giang said.
There is also a reputational dimension that carries particular weight in the world’s largest Muslim-majority country, with Karl Ian Uy Cheng Chua, an assistant professor at the University of the Philippines Diliman’s Asian Centre, citing Indonesian perceptions of Japan as being “pro-US and Israel”.
“This carries with it a strong anti-Muslim sentiment which is observed by Indonesians,” he said.
Japan condemned Hamas’ October 2023 attacks on Israel, but it took a more measured line when the US and Israel struck Iran in late February, prioritising diplomatic de-escalation, the safety of Japanese nationals and energy stability.
Cheng Chua added that Japan’s recent tightening of immigration controls had also dented trust at a time when Tokyo is simultaneously stepping up recruitment of foreign workers to address its chronic labour shortages.
Even among those who distrust Japan, the prevailing critique is less hostility than neglect. Of respondents who expressed distrust, 38.3 per cent said Japan was too absorbed by its own internal affairs and its relations with Northeast Asian neighbours to focus meaningfully on the broader region.
Giang said this was likely a result of Tokyo’s preoccupation with its rapidly ageing population, recent currency volatility and acute security anxieties relating to both Korean peninsula and Taiwan Strait.
But he said Southeast Asian nations were concerned these distractions would cause Tokyo to lose focus on its Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) vision – the strategic framework introduced by former prime minister Shinzo Abe in 2016, built around a rules-based international order, freedom of navigation and free trade – reducing it to something “more rhetorical than operational”.
Iannone said Indonesia placed a premium on partners that treat Southeast Asia as a priority in its own right, not merely as “a secondary theatre” in great-power competition.
When Japan appeared absorbed by developments closer to home, he said Indonesian elites tended to read it as a form of “inattentiveness” and adjusted their trust accordingly.
The ISEAS-Yusof Ishak Institute survey, released on April 7, polled 2,008 respondents from the private sector, research institutions and policymaking circles across all 11 Asean member states and showed Japan retaining its ranking as the region’s most trusted major power.