No one would have assumed that the quiet and unassuming Japanese, polite to a fault, would lead the way in forging Asia's emerging regional order. But looking back over the past 10 years, one can get a pretty good sense of Tokyo's hand in it.

It was Mr Shinzo Abe, as Japan's prime minister, who laid down the ground rules for what is now called the "free and open" Indo-Pacific (FOIP) strategy being advocated by his country as well as Australia, India and the United States, all four of which are members of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad).