Sat, Sep 17, 2011 page5

• ANALYSIS: Japanese PM Noda talks the talk that Washington likes to hear from Japan

  • Reuters, TOKYO
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  Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda is turning his back on his Democratic Party of Japan’s (DPJ) early effort to recast Tokyo’s US-centered diplomacy and embrace Asia more closely, instead putting the US alliance back at the core of security policy.

  However, Noda, who says his paratrooper father’s military career influenced his views on security, faces serious challenges to keeping ties with both close ally Washington and rising rival Beijing on an even keel.

  The toughest task for Noda, who took over this month as Japan’s sixth prime minister in five years, may be convincing Beijing and Washington that he will last long enough to be taken seriously.

  “People would like to be optimistic, but they still wonder if Noda can hold it together,” said Sheila Smith, a senior fellow at the New York-based Council on Foreign Relations.

  Noda — who is to make his diplomatic debut at the UN next week — clearly wants to avoid the perceived mistakes of his two immediate predecessors, one of whom strained US-Japan ties, while the other lurched into a bitter territorial feud that chilled relations with top trading partner China.

  “I think it is not necessary at this time to put forth a grand vision such as an East Asian Community,” the 54-year-old Noda, a former finance minister, wrote in an article.

  “What we must do before that is create scenarios for Japan’s response in case of a serious territorial incident,” he added. “We should never escalate an incident but to protect our territory, we must assert our claims and act when needed.”

  Yukio Hatoyama floated the idea of an East Asian Community inspired by the EU when he took office as the first DPJ premier in 2009, sparking fears in some US circles that Tokyo was tilting towards Beijing.

  His failed effort to move the US Marines’ Futenma air base off Okinawa — reluctant host to about half the US military in Japan — also frayed ties with Washington.

  Noda’s immediate predecessor, Naoto Kan, oversaw an unsettling row with China, first arresting a Chinese trawler captain in disputed waters and then letting him go, prompting domestic criticism that he had caved in to Beijing.

  Noda thus inherits a brittle relationship with China, in which growing economic interdependence vies with mutual mistrust born of territorial disputes and resource rivalry, Japanese wariness of Beijing’s expanding naval reach and Chinese bitterness over Japan’s military aggression before and during World War II.

  Add a looming leadership change in China next year and Japan’s anxiety about its declining regional and global clout, and experts see a significant risk of more nasty rows.

  “I don’t think Japan and China have recovered [from last year’s confrontation] and they don’t have the depth of strategic engagement. There is not a script that has reconciliation as an end-point,” Smith said.

  “We will probably see the Japan-China relationship punctuated by these kinds of eruptions,” he added.

  Noda’s reiteration before taking office of the view that Japanese wartime leaders convicted by an Allied tribunal after World War II were not “war criminals” under domestic law, raised hackles in China. So did his warning that China might take “provocative action” as its leadership changes next year.

  Noda has since backed the Japanese government view, accepting the guilty verdicts of the Allied tribunal and stated that he will not pay homage at Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, where several wartime leaders are honored. Visits to Yasukuni by Japanese prime ministers have infuriated Beijing in the past.

  While Noda’s comments to date may make Beijing wary, his vocal commitment to the US alliance and talk of Japan’s need to be able to defend itself will play well in Washington.

  Still, US policymakers, including US President Barack Obama — now set to meet his third Japanese premier in two years — will want to see if Noda can match words with action.

  “He’s talking the talk that Washington would like Japanese leaders to talk. The question is, will he walk the walk?” said Andrew Horvat, director of the Stanford Center in Kyoto.
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