With the advent of the Bush W. Bush administration, US-Japan diplomatic relations were destined to change. Bush campaigned on a platform of embracing traditional allies such as Japan -- music to the ears of the Japanese foreign ministry. At the same time, Bush and his advisers promised to treat China as a competitor rather than as an ally and to take a tougher stance in their dealings with North Korea, both were shifts in Clinton administration policy in northeast Asia that promised to complicate lives in Kasumagaseki.
In its first months in office, the Bush White House has carried through on both its promises, engendering both satisfaction and heartburn in Tokyo. What was not anticipated six months ago and has further complicated US-Japan relations, was the appointment of Makiko Tanaka as Japan's foreign minister. The outspoken, strong-willed, independent Tanaka, currently at war with her own ministry, has become the "X" factor in US-Japan relations as prime minister Junichiro Koizumi prepares for his first meeting with Bush at the end of June in Washington.
Bush administration officials are divided over how to interpret Tanaka's controversial behavior, public statements and policy stances. Most are inclined to dismiss as irrelevant Tanaka's most egregious failings, such as her refusal to meet with Deputy US Secretary of State Richard Armitage.
"She has said she has very little international exposure," said a former US State Department expert on Japan. "And that is an overstatement. Yet, so far the things she has done have been of no consequence to Japan's foreign diplomacy."
Yet some in Washington think Tanaka may be speaking, however inarticulately, for "the new Japan" and that Washington should not take Tanaka too lightly. "I don't think she is a dummy," said Steve Clemons, vice president of the New America Foundation in Washington. "So I think this can be a positive experiment. Unless she does something idiotic, she will be a national leader."
Women in Washington were elated that a female in Japan was finally given a position of such power and responsibility. But they feel that her subsequent actions have, in the words of one observer, "set back the cause of feminism in Japan by a more than a decade."
Tanaka's influence on US-Japan relations will be tested in the weeks ahead, as Japanese and American officials finalize details for the US-Japan security dialogue expected to be announced during Koizumi's visit to Washington. She must also demonstrate diplomatic forbearance as the new movie Pearl Harbor shapes American public attitudes toward Japan. How Tanaka handles both of these challenges will go a long way toward defining her future credibility on the world stage.
Puzzlement
Most of Washington is simply mystified by Tanaka. "She puzzles me," said Ed Lincoln, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, who was the economics adviser to US Ambassador to Tokyo Walter Mondale. "On the one hand, she represents some of the qualities that many people in Japan say we wish our politicians had, someone who will speak her mind, who has real ideas. In that sense, she is interesting. But she is so far away from what appears to be the positions her government wants to take on China, on Taiwan. It's one thing to not let the bureaucracy run everything. It's another to not be in touch with your own prime minister."
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