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Acknowledgments This book is the culmination of over eight years of research, thought, writing, and rewriting that began in 1999. Initially, I meant only to revisit a theme that had been dropped from my first book. That theme was “internationalization of the yen,” a constantly mutating debate that had resurfaced in Japanese financial politics every decade since the end of the Bretton Woods era. As I began my research in Tokyo that summer, the phrase had recently reentered political discourse, and I planned to better understand the domestic political economy of financial liberalization by tracking its use over time. Instead, I found a full-fledged debate about how to insulate Japan and East Asia from large-scale capital movements and fluctuations in the value of the dollar. Although the phrase “internationalization of the yen” eventually fell out of favor in the political and policy world, even by 1999 its original meaning had already been supplanted by much more ambitious thinking about regional financial insulation that drew on the ideas developed by advocates of yen internationalization. This was an exciting topic to address—not only were some of Japan’s most capable and intelligent financial policymakers and analysts involved, but a new era of East Asian regional cooperation was just beginning. It has been my great fortune to have been able to observe the whole path to date of ASEAN+3 financial cooperation, all the while having the opportunity to meet on a regular basis with leading participants and observers of those efforts. I am deeply grateful for their willingness to offer me guidance, instruction, and at times correction. I carried out much of my research in multiple visits to Tokyo, visits that would not have been possible without financial and logistical support from xii Acknowledgments a variety of sources. A fellowship from the Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation supported a month of research on this and other topics in the summer of 2001; a Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Grant allowed me to spend four months in 2005 focused on yen internationalization and financial regionalism . I also spent a month each in the summers of 1999 and 2000 using personal funds. In addition, over the years, I was able to make use of shorter visits sponsored by the U.S. Department of State, the University of Tokyo, the Institute for International Policy Studies, the Harvard Law School Program on International Financial Services (PIFS), the Yomiuri Shimbun, and the Policy Studies Group to conduct interviews and obtain materials. The PIFS annual symposia on U.S.-Japan and U.S.-China financial issues helped me to build contacts and knowledge, although actual discussions were off the record. A sabbatical leave from Boston University in 2005 allowed me to complete the bulk of my research and begin writing in earnest, and a book-writing grant from the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership in fall 2006 was instrumental in giving me the space to complete the initial draft by buying out my teaching responsibilities for the semester, in addition to sponsoring author’s seminars in Cambridge and Tokyo that provided invaluable criticism and guidance. I am also deeply grateful to the Policy Research Institute (and its predecessor, the Institute of Fiscal and Monetary Policy) of the Japanese Ministry of Finance, which provided me with office space and support in the summers of 1999, 2000, and 2005, as well as to the Bank of Japan’s Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies , which did the same in the summer of 2001. I have been the fortunate recipient of guidance and instruction from a large number of academics and policymakers from various countries and organizations including Japan, the United States, China, the International Monetary Fund, and the Asian Development Bank. Several have asked to remain unnamed, but I am happy to express my gratitude here to Akira Ariyoshi, Masatsugu Asakawa, David Cowen, Toyoo Gyohten, Nobuhiro Hiwatari, Kenta Ichikawa, Kiyoto Ido, Naoko Ishii, Takatoshi Ito, Tadashi Iwashita, Mikio Kajikawa, Masahiro Kawai, Shigeki Kimura, Shūhei Kishimoto , Hidehiro Konno, Tarō Kōno, Isao Kubota, Yōichi Nemoto, Hideki Nonoguchi, Toshizō Ōhara, Takeshi Ohta, Naoyuki Shinohara, Sadahiro Sugita, Atsushi Takeuchi, Rintarō Tamaki, Takuji Tanaka, John Taylor, Noriyoshi Torigoe, Hiroshi Watanabe, Tatsuo Yamazaki, and Naoyuki Yoshino. I also benefited from comments from audience members at numerous talks in academic and policy venues in Japan, the United States, South Korea, and Iceland. In addition, I received research assistance at various points from Tamon Asonuma, Jennifer Donham, and Saori...

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