Author: Tobias Harris, MIT

In the wake of its defeat the Kan government has made it patently clear that the Hatoyama government’s ‘ratification’ of the 2006 realignment plan was nothing of the sort — it is now saying that it will be impossible to complete negotiations before Okinawan gubernatorial election in November. The government once again is considering alternatives to the V-shaped runways to be built at Henoko bay, and is reluctant to impose a solution on the Okinawan people.

But, as the Wall Street Journal reports, American domestic politics is emerging as a new constraint on implementing the 2006 agreement. Both houses of Congress have voted to cut funding for the construction on Guam that is necessary to prepare the island to receive the 8,000 Marines and their dependants that according to the plan will move from Okinawa to Guam in 2014. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Tobias Harris

During Japan’s 2009 general election campaign, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) ran on a platform calling for a more ‘equal’ relationship with the United States. While the party’s leaders left the meaning of the phrase vague, the general idea was that a DPJ government would be more assertive in defending Japan’s national interests in its dealings with the US, arguing that under the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) Japan was too submissive when the US came asking for help in Afghanistan and Iraq.

The first test of the DPJ’s new approach to US-Japan relations was the dispute over the US Marine air station at Futenma in Okinawa. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Allen Choate

The new prime minister of Japan, Naoto Kan, who last week replaced Yukio Hatoyama after he abruptly resigned less than nine months into his term, certainly will have his hands full trying to reignite his country’s efforts to craft a coherent and sustained set of foreign policy goals and strategies.

Hatoyama’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) predecessor, Taro Aso, spoke about an ‘arc of freedom and prosperity’ in Asia as the core of Japanese foreign policy. Unfortunately, he was unable to articulate, much less implement, how that was to be achieved. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Satoshi Amako, Waseda University

In September last year, in the lower house general election the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) scored an overwhelming victory, greatly exceeding a majority taking 308 seats. Prime Minister Hatoyama and Secretary-General Ozawa formed the so-called ‘O-bato (小鳩) system’, the books were closed on this hectic change-of-government period, and many people thought that stable government would continue. However, at the beginning of this year the DPJ government began to waver around the issue of the questionable or inappropriate handling of political funds by both Hatoyama and Ozawa.

In addition, the government was shaken badly by the ‘Okinawa Futenma base relocation problem’, Prime Minister Hatoyama’s approval rating fell sharply, and eventually on June 1 the issue was put to rest by  Hatoyama’s and Ozawa’s resignations, and the political situation now enters a new stage with the emergence of the new Prime Minister, Naoto Kan, and an upper house election. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: John Hemmings, RUSI

Four Prime Ministers in four years; this fact has been mentioned in various articles in the wake of Japanese Prime Minister Hatoyama’s resignation, and it is a source of puzzlement and frustration within Japan and among its allies and neighbours. What hasn’t been asked is ‘why?’ What is causing this rapid turnover of political masters? Can Japan govern itself under these circumstances, and more importantly, what is the true cost of this rapid turnover of political leadership on Japan itself and on the region?

Despite the different circumstances of each prime ministerial career, there are common links in the fall of all four prime ministers. The most obvious has been public disillusionment, evident in low public approval ratings which herald sudden and hasty departures from office. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Yoichi Funabashi, Asahi Shumbun

In hindsight, the April 12 conversation between outgoing Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and US President Barack Obama was a watershed.

Seated beside each other at a dinner held during the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, the two leaders talked for about 10 minutes mainly about relocating the US Marine Corps Air Station Futenma. Obama told Hatoyama he had not made any public comments until then because Hatoyama had said, ‘Trust me,’ when the two met last November. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Tobias Harris, MIT

It appears that the inevitable has happened: NHK reports that Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio has informed the DPJ leadership that he intends to step down.

Hatoyama, of course, has no one to blame but himself. In the nine months since he took office, he has failed as a manager of his cabinet, as the head of the DPJ, and as the leader of his country. Unable to make up his mind, he groped from blunder to blunder, before finally making a controversial decision on Futenma without doing any of the work to convince a skeptical public of its merits.

Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Tobias Harris, MIT

On Friday, Fukushima Mizuho, the head of the Social Democratic Party of Japan, refused to bow to the prime minister’s decision to accept a modified version of the 2006 realignment agreement, forcing the prime minister to dismiss her from her position as minister responsible for consumer affairs.

Not surprisingly, on Sunday the SDPJ decided that it would leave the coalition, although it suggested that electoral cooperation in the upcoming upper house election is still possible. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Tobias Harris, MIT

It may have taken a few months longer than I expected, but it appears that the Hatoyama government may have finally accommodated itself to the 2006 agreement on the realignment of US forces. The US and Japanese governments have reached an understanding regarding the future of Futenma following Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to Tokyo.

The latest bilateral agreement largely reaffirms the 2006 roadmap: the Hatoyama government has agreed to the construction of a new runway somewhere in the vicinity of Camp Schwab at Henoko Bay, with the details regarding the precise location and the method of construction to be decided by President Obama’s visit to Japan in autumn. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Tobias Harris, MIT

Writing on the nuclear summit, Al Kamen, who pens a Beltway gossip column in the Washington Post, had the following to say about Japanese Prime Minister Hatoyama:

By far the biggest loser of the extravaganza was the hapless and (in the opinion of some Obama administration officials) increasingly loopy Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama. He reportedly requested but got no bilat. The only consolation prize was that he got an ‘unofficial’ meeting during Monday night’s working dinner. Maybe somewhere between the main course and dessert? Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Tobias Harris, MIT

Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio returned home to Japan Wednesday after attending the Nuclear summit in Washington hosted by US President Barack Obama. Whatever significance the summit had for Obama’s diplomatic agenda, as far as US-Japan relations are concerned it was overshadowed by Futenma. Hatoyama’s self-imposed deadline of resolving the dispute by May is approaching, and there are few signs that his government will be able to reach a conclusion that satisfies the US and local communities in Okinawa by the end of next month. Indeed, on the eve of Hatoyama’s trip the government announced that it would be holding off on opening working-level talks with the US because it did not yet have a plan to present.

It is safe to say in terms of the process, the Hatoyama government’s approach to Futenma has failed. What explains the Hatoyama government’s disastrous performance on the Futenma issue? Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Tobias Harris, MIT

In different ways, two articles published in Western media outlets this week suggest the emergence of a new narrative concerning Japan in elite circles in the United States. One might call that narrative the ‘losing Japan’ narrative, reminiscent of the idea — propagated by newsman Henry Luce — that the United States, or rather, the Democratic Party ‘lost’ China when the Communists won the Chinese Civil War. This narrative suggests that the United States is ‘losing’ Japan to China, raising a call to arms that unless the US government acts expeditiously it could let the DPJ-led government lead Japan into China’s embrace.

The first is the now infamous editorial in the Washington Post on Fujita Yukihisa, the DPJ upper house member best known for his doubts about the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Tobias Harris, MIT

Within a week of the formation of the first Bolshevik government, Leon Trotsky, the People’s Commissar for Foreign Affairs, went to the foreign ministry and forced the staff to open safes containing secret treaties that the Tsarist government had made with the Allied powers over the course of World War I, treaties that for the most part concerned how the Allies would divide up the territorial spoils of war.

‘Abolition of secret diplomacy,’ wrote Trotsky, ‘is the first essential of an honorable, popular, and really democratic foreign policy.’ Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Christopher Pokarier, Waseda University

Whales do not usually surface by the exclusive north shore of Sydney harbour. Yet when Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada sat down for a meeting with Kevin Rudd at the Australian Prime Minister’s official Sydney residence, Kirribilli House, on Saturday afternoon, the topic was very much on the menu of their conversation. Prime Minister Rudd declared just the previous day that, as pledged while in Opposition, if a diplomatic agreement to end Japan’s Antarctic whaling program by November was not achieved then ‘…let me tell you, we’ll be going to the International Court of Justice.’

That the whaling issue could assume such public prominence might bemuse pioneers of the bilateral relationship who overcame the legacy of war and cultural distance to forge a prosperous and profoundly important partnership between the two nations. Read the rest of this entry »

Author: Hitoshi Tanaka, JCIE

Over the past several years, and especially since September’s historic change of government in Japan, it has become clear that there is a need to reassess the US-Japan alliance to ensure that it is equipped to face the challenges of the 21st century. There have been changes in Japan that are now reflected in domestic politics, but we cannot ignore the fact that there have been important changes in the regional context as well. China’s rise is apparent to everyone, and there is now a consensus view that East Asia is becoming an engine of growth whose dynamism is benefiting the world.

Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama has spoken frequently of two lofty concepts that arise out of a recognition that the regional context has changed: the desirability of forging an ‘East Asian community’ and the need to have a more equal US-Japan relationship. What is missing in this talk, however, is a clear articulation of how to link the goals of a strong and more balanced US-Japan relationship with a vision of regional community that is equipped to deal with the changes unfolding before us. Although some observers may see these aims as inconsistent or even mutually exclusive, they can be complementary. In fact, effectively coordinating them should be the focus of intense and forward-looking discussions between Japan and the United States. Read the rest of this entry »