And, in the long run, Lincoln said, "Tanaka could be a problem. It's not that she is so inept, but that she has a consistent hard-nosed view of Japanese national interest and wants to suck up to China and not be close to Taiwan.
These postures are antithetical to the US' long-term interests in Asia. If Tanaka's views should come to shape Japanese posture in the world, or if her sentiments strike a nerve among Japanese voters, the Bush administration could rapidly become concerned. This could complicate upcoming US-Japan security dialogue.
A further complication has been the release of the film Pearl Harbor, which recounts Japan's attack on the US Pacific fleet in 1941. This blockbuster film -- released on Memorial Day weekend, when Americans are supposed to honor their war dead -- played to huge audiences. Japan fears that the film could trigger a wave of anti-Japanese sentiment in the US.
Nevertheless, early movie reviews have been damning. "Although this Walt Disney movie is based, inspired and even partially informed by a real event referred to as Pearl Harbor," said the Washington Post sarcastically, "the movie is actually based on the movies Top Gun, Titanic and Saving Private Ryan.
In other words, this film is an effort to exploit the commercial appeal of films such as Star Wars, it has very little to do with history and could just as easily have been set during the American Revolution, with the British as the villains, or in Europe during World War II with the Germans as the enemy. In fact, the initial public venom generated by the movie has been aimed at the Disney Corp for the moral relativism in the film, not at Japan for its actions during the war. Disney has been criticized for announcing it will cut some scenes that Japanese audiences may find offensive before the film is released in Japan.
"No where in the film could anyone glean a hint about Imperial Japan's invasion of China and its designs on the rest of Asia," wrote Dorothy Rabinowitz in the Wall Street Journal. "That our former enemies could possibly find offensive in this blame-free, nobody's-right-or-wrong portrayal of the Japanese sneak attack it would be hard to imagine."
In the end Tanaka has added spice to Japan's often bland diplomacy. After all, how many people in the past, outside of Kasumagaseki, were even aware of the name of Japan's foreign minister. Now, she is not only among the most popular politicians in Japan, but also possibly Japan's most notorious foreign minister in modern times.
"It does give a little bit of the impression of things being out of control," said Clyde Prestowitz, president of the Economic Strategy Institute, a Washington think tank. "But it's refreshing and exciting."
Bruce Stokes is the senior fellow for Economic Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.
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