The Unquiet Prime Minister

Like Koizumi, Abe seeks to move beyond Japan’s postwar passivity. Koizumi sent naval ships to the war in Afghanistan and ground troops to the war in Iraq, both in noncombat roles. Since Abe took power in September, Tokyo has upgraded the Japan Defense Agency to formal ministry status and intensified cooperation with the Pentagon on missile defense. Abe’s ultimate goal, long prized by Japanese conservatives, is to amend the pacifist Article 9 of Japan’s MacArthur-era constitution. He hopes to drag Japan from its guilt-driven foreign policy toward a “proactive diplomacy” based on “common values,” such as freedom and democracy.

All of which the Bush administration has welcomed. But Abe is more ideological than Koizumi. He gives credence to Japan’s World War II revisionists and regards the Tokyo Trials with suspicion. Koizumi apologized several times for the damage wrought by Japanese militarism; Abe seems less comfortable acknowledging this history. Many Japanese complain of “apology fatigue,” insisting their country has sufficiently expressed remorse for Tojo-era crimes. But Abe goes a step further, often sugarcoating those crimes.

The “history issue” flared up again on March 1, when Abe appeared to deny that Japanese soldiers had coerced tens of thousands of Asian women into sexual slavery during World War II. Though he pledged to honor the Kono Statement–Japan’s 1993 apology for the military brothels–and later apologized for the suffering of the “comfort women” (as they are euphemistically known in Japan), the damage was done. The Western media went ballistic.

Abe was responding, in part, to a resolution introduced in the House of Representatives by California Democrat Mike Honda, which demands that Tokyo apologize frankly for the wartime sex slavery. If Abe’s comments were horrendous, so was his timing. Japan can justifiably claim the high ground in its dealings with North Korea, whose agents abducted at least 13 (and perhaps many more) Japanese citizens in the 1970s and 1980s. But Abe stained this moral clarity when he denied Japan’s own record of kidnapping.

“It’s extremely bad politics internationally,” says a former Bush administration official. According to this official, who is very pro-Japan, the chief U.S. envoy to the six-party talks on North Korea, Christopher Hill, believes Japan is “isolated” and “radioactive.” Other senior Asia hands at Foggy Bottom reportedly share this opinion.

Yet that seems overstated. Thanks in part to its foreign aid and burgeoning internationalism, Japan now commands remarkable goodwill, especially in Southeast Asia. According to a BBC World Service Poll released in early March, 84 percent of Indonesians and 70 percent of Filipinos consider Japan a “mainly positive” global influence, as do 66 percent of Americans. Its image may be mud in China and South Korea, but Australia, India, Vietnam, Thailand, and Singapore are all pursuing closer ties.

By foolishly donning the revisionist historian’s cap, Abe distracted attention from his foreign policy, which Foreign Minister Taro Aso likes to call “value-oriented diplomacy.” Abe speaks frequently of Japan’s “new values”–“freedom, democracy, human rights, and the rule of law”–and advocates a quadrilateral strategic dialogue among the United States, Japan, Australia, and India. On March 13, he signed a defense pact with Australian prime minister John Howard, the first formal Japanese security agreement with a country other than America. On April 16, the United States, Japan, and India staged their first joint naval exercise.

Indeed, the best safeguard against dangerous Japanese nationalism has always been a healthy U.S. alliance. And Abe believes “it is essential that Japan strengthen its alliance with the United States,” calling the bilateral relationship “invaluable and irreplaceable.” Boosting U.S.-Japan relations has been the heart of Bush’s East Asia strategy since he took office. But now many Japanese worry that Washington is undermining their position on North Korea.

“The problem is Chris Hill,” says one prominent Japanese journalist, a self-described “realist” who requested anonymity. “Hill doesn’t see Japan as a dependable ally.” Indeed, “he ignores Japan. Lots of diplomats are really pissed off.” Whether this journalist is correct–and his view of Hill appears to be widespread among Japanese media and policymakers–Japan reacted sourly to the February 13 North Korea nuclear deal, which Hill brokered.

“The overall impression is that we went wobbly,” says the former Bush official. The February 13 agreement gave North Korea 60 days to shut down its Yongbyon nuclear reactor in return for massive dollops of fuel oil (or equivalent economic aid) and a separate pledge to reconsider U.S. sanctions. Farther down the road, Pyongyang could gain diplomatic recognition and more aid in return for full nuclear disclosure and dismantling. Naturally, Kim Jong Il upped the ante right away, demanding the Treasury Department first release the entire $25 million in North Korean assets at the Macau-based Banco Delta Asia that had been frozen since 2005. The Bush administration agreed. Still, the 60-day deadline came and went without any resolution of Yongbyon.

Tokyo smells a U.S. policy shift: from pressure and isolation to piecemeal concessions. It’s hard to disagree. The good news for Abe is that, given the apparent unraveling of the February 13 accord, he can make a strong case to Bush that Kim has again proven intransigent and duplicitous. As the Nikkei Shimbun, a centrist Japanese financial newspaper, wrote in a March 16 editorial, America must reassure Japan that it will not “settle for easy cosmetic solutions” to the North Korean threat. There will be plenty else for Bush and Abe to discuss, including the relocation of U.S. bases on Okinawa, free trade, and energy policy. But for Japan, the specter of North Korea–and the fear of U.S. appeasement–trumps most other worries.

The alliance remains structurally robust: America and Japan share too many interests for there to be any real breakdown. “A lot of what Japan is doing is balancing against China,” says Susan Shirk, a top State Department Asia hand under President Clinton and author of the new book China: Fragile Superpower. This fits with the broader U.S. strategy of engaging China while also checking the rise of Chinese power and preserving a regional order favorable to democracy. Thus, Abe’s hope that Bush will support a four-way U.S.-Japan-Australia-India dialogue. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has reportedly been reluctant to do so, for fear of angering Beijing.

Abe, for his part, routinely stresses the need for “mutually beneficial” Sino-Japanese relations. He quickly backtracked from his “comfort women” comments after seeing the fuss they provoked, and he agreed last October to launch a joint history project with China, which is now (when Hong Kong is included) Japan’s biggest trading partner. Despite the recent controversy, Wen Jiabao visited Japan in mid-April, the first such trip by a Chinese premier in seven years.

Squabbles over historical culpability should not discredit Japan’s new foreign policy, which is healthy both for the region and the world. But when it comes to World War II controversies, Abe needs to take a hint from his predecessor’s hero, Elvis Presley, and engage in “a little less conversation.”

Duncan Currie is a reporter at THE WEEKLY STANDARD.