A commonplace view holds that the trend toward Asian financial regionalism is a relatively new phenomenon, developing in response to the 1997–1998 Asian financial crisis in particular. In this article I challenge this view by analyzing financial regionalist projects before the crisis. Asian countries, especially Japan, sought to establish an Asia-only financial cooperation framework throughout the 1990s. The policy stance of the United States, in contrast, was to participate in Asian forums and/or by itself propose and establish regional groupings that included the United States. This competition between Japan and the United States is a key factor in understanding the rise and fall of various regionalist projects and also has theoretical implications for membership politics in regional financial cooperation frameworks.