In 1996, the parameters of the Australia–Japan relationship were set to change in a manner that few observers had predicted. In the world of foreign affairs, changes of government usually do not dislocate foreign relations or policies. The paramountcy of the national interest normally transcends partisan politics; trade and the business of managing relationships with other nations carry their own momentum and their own rationale. When Hashimoto Ryutaro took over the prime ministership of Japan in January 1996, and John Howard became Prime Minister of a Coalition government in Australia in March the same year, we could justifiably have expected the basics of the bilateral relationship to continue largely undisturbed. While the rhetoric on both sides conveyed the ’business-as-usual’ message, subsequent events were to deliver a different reality. The issue at the heart of this transformation was regionalism.