Just a few weeks after taking office in early September, Japan’s new prime minister, Yoshihiko Noda, had his first meeting with US President Barack Obama in New York on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly.

It was widely reported that first and foremost on the agenda for this meeting was the relocation of the Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, with President Obama delivering a stern message that the time has come for results. Just how stern President Obama’s message to Prime Minister Noda was has been the subject of speculation, as his words were relayed to the media through aides and spokespersons. Nevertheless, an atmosphere of impatience seems to have built in the United States over the Futenma relocation. Indeed, as Japan’s merry-go-round of prime ministers continues to spin (Noda is the fourth Japanese prime minister during Obama’s presidency), little to no progress has been made on the issue. In Japan there is an expectation that the current agreement—confirmed between successive governments of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan and the Obama administration—should be honored, despite it essentially being a carbon copy of an earlier agreement made in 2006 under Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party. And with another sideline meeting between Prime Minister Noda and President Obama in the cards at the APEC leaders’ summit next month in Honolulu, there is an expectation that some progress, even if only symbolic, should be made to demonstrate that things are moving forward.

Feasibility of Current Plan

There is a serious danger right now that expectations will be raised and we will be disappointed once again, renewing strains in the US-Japan alliance. But forcing the implementation of the current plan—which would see Futenma relocated farther north on Okinawa’s main island to Henoko Bay near the town of Nago—appears infeasible given the significant changes that have taken place in political conditions in both Japan and the United States.

In Okinawa, local opposition to the Henoko plan has greatly intensified. Since I was personally involved in the original relocation negotiations beginning in 1996, I have frequently travelled to Okinawa and I have been able to witness first-hand the change in people’s sentiment. The intensification of the local opposition was given renewed vigor due to former Prime Minister Hatoyama’s mishandling of the issue. His flip-flopping on the idea of relocating Futenma outside of Okinawa Prefecture greatly raised local expectations that Okinawa’s excessive basing burdens might be decreased.

The vigorous opposition movement has also skillfully mobilized protesters. They bring their protest to the relocation site in Henoko Bay itself and strategically place elderly protesters in the front lines. This makes it difficult for the police to disperse protesters, and efforts to do so forcefully would risk bloodshed and possibly jeopardize sustainable alliance relations.

Another complicating issue is the central government’s need to obtain approval from the Okinawa governor’s office in order to construct landfill runways across the waters of Henoko Bay. Current Governor Hirokazu Nakaima campaigned on a platform of consulting with local residents on the issue. In a speech at George Washington University just days before Prime Minister Noda met with President Obama, Governor Nakaima stated that if the US and Japanese governments choose to force the implementation of the current relocation plan it will cause an irreparable rift between the people of Okinawa and the US Forces in the prefecture and adversely affect the US-Japan alliance. Further, the current mayor of Nago City, Susumu Inamine, was elected on a platform of opposing the relocation of Futenma to Henoko, meaning it looks highly unlikely that the central government will be able to acquire local agreement, which in turn means that Governor Nakaima’s permission will likely not be forthcoming.

In the United States, too, there have been changes in conditions that call into question the feasibility of the current relocation plan. The global financial crisis, and more recently the kerfuffle over the deal to raise the debt ceiling, demonstrate that serious reductions are needed in the US budget. While some modest military budget cuts have already been announced, this may be only the tip of the iceberg, and the United States may have to review its global military posture if it is to bring its current military spending to sustainable levels. It would be reckless of the United States to insist that Japan implement a Futenma replacement facility plan without ensuring that it also has the means within its own budget to follow through, and it would be tremendously damaging to the alliance, especially in light of how much tension Futenma has already caused. Amid the economic turmoil, tensions over the current military spending levels have already begun to emerge between Congress and the Obama administration. Senators Carl Levin, Jim Webb, and John McCain have recommended that the Department of Defense revisit the option of integrating Futenma’s functions into the Kadena Air Base to keep costs down. However, the Department of Defense has historically opposed such integration of forces. The current standoff is becoming a game of chicken as the Obama administration has not shown signs of accepting Congress’s proposals and instead looks more likely to try and shift the burden for resolving the problem onto the government of Japan.

Finding a New Way Forward

While neither the US nor the Japanese government cares to admit it, local opposition to the current Henoko plan effectively means the situation has reached an impasse. Imposing the current plan upon the people of Nago will have severely negative consequences for the US-Japan alliance. On the other hand, if the current relocation plan is not implemented and Futenma continues its status quo ante operations, there is a risk that one major accident at or around the base will cause tensions to spill over and fatally damage the alliance. In either scenario, Futenma will become more significant, making it a stumbling block for the whole alliance. This is a harmful way to frame alliance relations. Rather than building the Futenma relocation up again into a big unresolvable issue that will continue to burden the alliance, what is needed now is open mindedness and a process that allows for a soft landing.

To ensure such a process, both governments need to sit down together, review the changes in conditions that have taken place, and formulate a plan that is acceptable to both governments and to the people of Okinawa. Until the time that Futenma can be returned to the people of Okinawa, it is clear that Futenma’s functions need to be gradually reduced sooner rather than later. Other sites (such as Kadena, areas of Japan outside Okinawa, and areas outside Japan such as Guam and Hawaii) need to gradually assume Futenma’s functions. Futenma should be made into the least busy military airport in Japan, reducing the risk of an accident occurring in the heavily urbanized residential areas that immediately surround the base. But at the same time it needs to be kept open—on standby—for contingency planning purposes, and the base’s landowners need to continue to be able to collect rent in exchange for the lease.

Moreover, rather than fixating on Futenma, US-Japan alliance relations should be re-framed to give greater importance to a broader range of topics. We need a future-oriented plan that maps the way forward for the alliance while taking into consideration the changing security dynamics in the region and China’s growing military capabilities. To adapt to the rise of China, such a plan needs to include confidence-building measures vis-à-vis China, establish inclusive mechanisms that allow for greater US-Japan cooperation with China, and create a legal framework for increasing the Japan Self Defense Force’s military role. A wisemen’s commission, including government officials, politicians, public intellectuals, and business leaders from both countries, should be established to allow for the deepest and best expert consideration of the issues at stake.

US-Japan relations can no longer be held hostage to the debate over the relocation of Futenma, and the issue needs to be resolved before it causes irreparable damage to alliance relations. But both the US and the Japanese governments need to be pragmatic in their search for a solution, one that takes into account the major shifts in the political and financial environment since the existing relocation plan was first agreed upon.

Hitoshi Tanaka is a senior fellow at Japan Center for International Exchange (JCIE) and chairman of the Institute for International Strategy at the Japan Research Institute. He previously served as Japan’s deputy minister for foreign affairs.

This article is reprinted with the kind permission of JCIE from East Asia Insights Vol. 6 No. 5 October 2011.

1. Yoshihiko Noda, Japan’s not-so-ordinary prime minister
2. Hatoyama accommodates the US on Futenma
3. The US-Japan alliance: beyond Futenma

The exchange of fire between the North and South Korean militaries that left two ROK Marines dead and at least a dozen wounded, following closely on the heels of revelations regarding a new North Korean uranium reprocessing facility, strengthens hopes that the US and Japan might be able look past Futenma and strengthen their security relationship. The relationship has, of course, had a bit more wind in its sails since the standoff between Japan and China over the maritime collision near the Senkakus.

Can we really draw a straight line from regional instability to closer security cooperation between the US and Japan? Arguably this logic has worked in the past, with North Korean provocations from 1994 onward stirring Japanese policymakers to bolster Japan’s capabilities and launch new bilateral initiatives with the US, ballistic missile defense being perhaps the most notable example. And there are signs that the DPJ-led government is remarkably more realist in its approach to the region than many expected. I think Foreign Minister Maehara Seiji spoke for many in the DPJ when he told an official Chinese foreign affairs publication that he is ‘by no means a hawk but a realist who values idealism.’ The distinction between ‘hawk’ and ‘realist’ is meaningful and says a lot about the DPJ’s approach to foreign and security policy.

To be a hawk in Japanese politics is not just to support a certain set of policies: it is more a cultural identity than a policy stance. It is a worldview that, in addition to wanting to dismantle political and legal constraints on Japan’s security policy, questions the value of Japan’s post-war regime (that which former Prime Minister Abe Shinzō wanted to ‘leave behind’), supports revising the constitution (not just Article 9), opposes ‘masochistic’ interpretations of history, and promotes traditionalist values. While they cite the threats posed by North Korea and China to justify their policies, the idea of Japan as a great power is valued in its own right — it is not driven by material considerations.

Meanwhile, to be a realist in Japan means much the same as it does in other countries: valuing the sober assessment of national interests, and thinking clearly about how best to secure those interests using the means available. While I think ‘realism’ is often associated with a predisposition towards military capabilities and the use of force, it need not be. As Eric Heginbotham and Richard Samuels argued in a 1998 article in the journal International Security, post-war Japanese leaders have been ‘mercantile realists,’ thinking of Japanese national interests in broader terms that prioritised Japan’s economic position.

The DPJ has thus far been far more realist in its foreign and security policies than has been generally recognised. Like earlier LDP governments it is working to maintain some sort of constructive relationship with China, however difficult, while building closer bilateral ties with other countries in the region that are also concerned about Japan’s rise. The government has signaled that it is willing to invest in Japan’s security, for example announcing last month that the MSDF will increase its purchase of new submarines from 16 to more than 20. As this post at Sigma1 notes there are signs that the government’s new National Defense Program Guidelines, which the DPJ has been considering since it took power, will contain a number of sensible proposals to enhance Japan’s security, including a relaxation of the arms exporting principles and relocation of SDF personnel from the north to the south. Is Japan ‘rearming’? Arguably not. But we are not seeing a passive and pacifist Japan either, despite the idea that the DPJ is ‘left-wing.’

But what about the relationship with the United States? On the face of it, the dispute with the US over Futenma has shown the limits of the DPJ’s realist tendencies, allowing its position on the bases to be driven by domestic political considerations instead of the ‘national interest.’ However, is it really in the interest of either Japan or the US to force bases on an unwilling Okinawan public? The point is not that the DPJ has been particularly sober minded in its approach to the issue, but that it is not altogether clear how the bases in Okinawa serves Japan’s interests, which leads to the larger question of how the US-Japan alliance can best serve the interests of both countries.

This is the big question hanging over the alliance, the question that the two countries may finally be in the process of addressing as they begin consultations in advance of a bilateral summit that is expected to be held sometime in the spring. Will North Korean provocations or Chinese maritime adventurism push the alliance in new directions? If anything, I think regional uncertainty reinforces the trend towards a ‘strong but limited’ security relationship focused deterrence in and around Japan instead of more expansive or grandiose plans for the alliance. And given Okinawan opposition to US bases and the uncertainty regarding the US economy, the countries should be talking about politically and economically sustainable deterrent capabilities.

As such, while developments in the region may lend a certain urgency to bilateral talks about the future of the alliance, it is unlikely that they will push the US-Japan alliance in a drastically different direction than it was already going.

Tobias Harris is a Japanese politics specialist who worked for a DPJ member of the upper house of the Diet 2006-2007. He is now a Ph.D. candidate in political science at MIT.

1. The state of the relationship with Japan
2. The two Koreas: Talking peace, with menace
3. China–DPRK’s special relationship of convenience

Kan Naoto’s re-election as leader of the ruling DPJ has given him the mandate to continue as prime minister. Most Japanese welcomed this outcome. They are dismayed by the state of national politics and the country’s inability to produce stable leadership since Koizumi Junichiro left office in 2006. Kan is the fifth prime minister since then.

But the path of political renewal in Japan is not over yet. For Kan’s re-election to become truly meaningful and restore the public sense that the change of power last August was the right choice, Kan needs to cast off the legacies of the 1955-regime of left-right tension within his party.  These tensions prevent the DPJ from becoming a truly new political party, liberated from Liberal Democratic Party-style politics and the socialist/leftist mindset toward the security alliance with the US.

The Twin Legacies

Last August Japanese voters gave a decisive ‘no’ to the LDP but that wasn’t an enthusiastic ‘yes’ to the DPJ. The new ruling party has struggled to convert these anti-LDP voters and get them to cast a vote of confidence for the DPJ. Sadly, the DPJ failed to secure a majority in the Upper House after the July mid-term elections. Without a majority in the two houses, the impact of the change of power diminishes.

There are three causes for this failure. First, Hatoyama Yukio, the DPJ’s first prime minister, bungled the issue of the relocation of the US Marines’ Futenma airbase in Okinawa by using it as the showcase to demonstrate how his administration would do things differently from the LDP. Second, allegations of dirty money haunt Ozawa Ichiro, undermining his image as an otherwise strong leader who orchestrated the change of power. The resignation of Hatoyama and Ozawa in May brought Kan to office. He initially inspired those disenchanted with the Hatoyama government, but Kan himself became the third factor by committing a tactical blunder in the election campaign: he mentioned a tax hike before the elections. These setbacks undermined coherence within the DPJ itself, especially after Ozawa, who controls the largest group in the party, decided to challenge Kan for party leadership.

The leadership race between Kan and Ozawa was, essentially, a choice between old style and new style politics. Grassroots party members and registered supporters overwhelmingly voted for Kan. More attuned to the views of the general public that wants stable leadership and a prime minister who believes in accountability and transparency, the grassroots rejected Ozawa. The people’s expectation of politics and politicians has decidedly shifted away from the old ways.

Farewell to Old Ghosts

Having cleared another hurdle in Japan’s democratic evolution and defeated Ozawa in his bid for power, one hopes that Kan can now last as prime minister for at least two years until the next party leader election, or even until the next general elections in 2013, if only to give the Japanese time to absorb and adjust to the shock of the change of power. While Kan’s leadership remains untested, he is not in an enviable position; Ozawa is not known to concede easily and he still commands sizeable influence within the party. And, there is no policy issue that can be singled out as more important than others, from the economy or social welfare to foreign and security policy. The Cabinet must be an all-rounder.

Nevertheless, if Kan has one crucial job, it is to forge a DPJ foreign and security policy identity. After having picked the anti-US bases Social Democratic Party (SDP) as a coalition partner, the ghostly re-appearance of the old ‘left-right axis’ in the context of coalition politics over Futenma exposed the DPJ’s inability to build a consensus on foreign and security policy issues, such as the constitutional restraint on the right to collective defence or Japan’s role in the security alliance with the US.

Defence policy and alliance politics in post-war Japan has never been the product of open and democratic decision-making, particularly during the Cold War, in part because Japanese security was (and still is) ultimately dependent on the US, but also because the LDP’s old nemesis, the Socialist Party, was ideologically incapable of recognising the alliance or of accepting the Self-Defence Forces (SDF) as constitutional. As a party formed by defectors from these two parties (the Socialists and the LDP), united in opposition to LDP dominance, the DPJ has internalised that left-right divide. Had the DPJ consolidated its position on security policy and offered its vision of a new security identity for Japan before it took charge (and it had ample time to do so), Hatoyama might not have looked suspiciously anti-alliance.

Japan can no longer afford to keep the dichotomies — between militarists and pacifists, conservatives and leftist, or pro-US and pro-UN — that keep it from building a national consensus on Japan’s core security identity, one that does not sway from one administration to another. This is all the more imperative if changes of power are to become regular occurrences in Japanese democracy.

Haruko Satoh was formerly a research fellow at the Japan Institute of International Affairs and an associate fellow at Chatham House. An earlier version of this article appeared as PacNet No. 42 (Sept. 23, 2010), published by the Pacific Forum CSIS.

1. Regime change in Japan?
2. The ‘Ozawa Regime’ and the future of the DPJ
3. Why Ozawa is wiser than his critics

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.

Congressional staff members said the problems in building new facilities for the Marines in Guam loomed even larger than the politics in Japan in their decision to cut funding.

The Senate appropriations committee said they remained concerned about Guam’s inadequate water, electrical, road and sewer infrastructure — and said inadequate planning had gone in to preparing for the nonmilitary aspects of the move.

The House Appropriation Committee report echoed the Senate findings about Guam, and said it had made the cuts because of the Defense Department’s ‘inability to address numerous concerns about the sustainability of the buildup as currently planned.’

These budget cuts come more than two years after the US government’s Government Accountability Office (GAO) criticised the Defense Department the the US military for dragging its feet on the Guam end of the realignment plan and suggested that it was unlikely that the 2014 target would be met — and not because of Japanese politics. In late 2008 Admiral Timothy Keating, then the commander of US Pacific Command, acknowledged that the plan would most likely not be executed on schedule, citing budgetary concerns.

Corey Wallace is right to point to Washington’s hypocrisy — for all of Washington’s hand-wringing about political instability in Japan, the reality of the 2006 agreement was that the domestic political conditions concerning the agreement in both countries were at best complicated, and at worse impassable. For the realignment to go forward on schedule, the US government would have to secure the support of the people of Guam and Congress would have to budget a tremendous amount of money to improve the island’s infrastructure, while Tokyo secured the support of communities in Okinawa and budget for the Futenma replacement facility and the construction underway on Guam.

In the rush to get something committed to paper, the Bush administration and the LDP have left the alliance with a festering sore, an agreement that looks all but unimplementable, has eroded trust between Washington and Tokyo, and mortally wounded the DPJ in its ten months in office. Considering these costs, it is remarkable that the Obama administration has clung so tenaciously to this Bush administration legacy. Is there anything in American foreign policy making to rival the much-vaunted bipartisan consensus on Japan?

This article was originally posted on Observing Japan here.

1. Guam recedes into the distance
2. Japan: The Hatoyama government tackles the alliance early
3. Gates rules out renegotiation of Okinawa deal with Japan

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. According to a 2006 bilateral agreement that was reaffirmed in early 2009 by an outbound LDP government, the US would relocate some 8,000 US Marines plus their dependents to Guam, while vacating Futenma for a replacement facility built at Henoko Bay near Camp Schwab, another Marine base. While in opposition, the DPJ drafted an ‘Okinawa vision’ paper that called for a process of moving the air base out of Okinawa, and then out of the country. While the DPJ backed away from this program in its electoral manifesto—where, in addition to calling for an equal relationship with the US, it promised only that it would ‘review’ the agreement on the realignment of US forces in Japan—the new Hatoyama government, pressed by the Obama administration to accept the agreement or provide a viable alternative, struggled for months to find an alternative as the Okinawan people demonstrated against the Marines staying in their prefecture and as Washington worried about former Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama’s ‘dithering.’

At the end of May, Hatoyama ultimately decided to accept a modified version of the original agreement, with the exact details about the replacement facility to be hammered out in negotiations with the US.

It is a matter of opinion whether that decision marks the failure of the DPJ’s promise of a more equal relationship or a step in the right direction as the government was able, despite US pressure, to conduct a review of a controversial policy on its own timeline. However, there were worrying signs for Japan’s future in the DPJ government’s approach to the Futenma dispute. Even as the government debated a policy matter with implications for US deterrent power in the region, and therefore Japan’s security, it rarely couched its arguments in these terms, despite an audience in Washington that thinks almost entirely in these terms. It was only late in the review process, when it appeared that the government was preparing to accept the existing agreement, that the prime minister began talking about the deterrent capabilities of the Marines—at which point few were convinced by the argument.

The vast distance separating the US military from all other militaries, including those of its allies, means that there really is no such thing as an equal security relationship with the US. However, if Japan is going to disagree with the US constructively—a Japan that can say ‘No, but…’—its leaders must be able to speak the language of realpolitik convincingly. By being unable to articulate Japan’s security policy independent on the US, its leaders remain dependent on the US.

The DPJ government is not the first Japanese government to struggle with this problem. Ishiba Shigeru, a leading LDP politician who has twice served as minister for defence, writes in his book of politicians uninterested in national defence, criticising fellow LDP members for focusing only on the size of the defence budget and not on why Japan has a defence budget in the first place. Japanese leaders, to say nothing of the public, have long been insulated from the Self-Defence forces of which they were nominally in charge.

Accordingly, any discussion of Japan’s taking greater responsibility for its own defence—especially spending more on the SDF—must begin with changing Japanese security discourse. The Japanese public and its representatives have to first understand the value of the SDF before they will comfortably support more defence spending or new roles for the SDF.

It is questionable, however, whether the rising generation of Japanese politicians is any more capable of articulating Japanese security policy before the Japanese public and in dialogue with the US. Although a number of taboos surrounding discussions of security policy appear to have fallen, what Ishiba points to as the obsession with the cost of national defence may prove to be more resilient, particularly as Japan faces its mounting debt and its aging population. It may take more than mere sabre-rattling by China or North Korea to change this underlying brake on the development of a Japanese ‘security consciousness’.

This is an article from the most recent edition of the East Asia Forum Quarterly: ‘Next generation on Asia’.

1. Japan: the DPJ preparing to retreat?
2. Political games have no place in security policy
3. Gates rules out renegotiation of Okinawa deal with Japan

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.

Hatoyama, in his limited tenure, stressed shaping an ‘East Asian fraternity,’ improving relations with China, and putting the bilateral relationship with the U.S. on a more ‘equal’ footing. Re-opening the issue of the U.S. air base on Okinawa turned out to be a tactical error. Tragically (and somewhat ironically, since the goal was to build a more balanced relationship with the U.S.) it served to introduce a new element of distrust into the Japan-U.S. alliance that had previously not been present.

Many, in fact, attribute the main cause of Hatoyama’s downfall to his government’s inept handling of the U.S. Okinawa base relocation issue. Under the previous LDP government, the U.S. and Japan, after arduous and lengthy negotiations, arrived at an agreement on how to realign U.S. forces and bases on Okinawa. Then, almost from his first day in office, Hatoyama began renegotiating that agreement, with the aim of moving U.S. bases off of Okinawa. In the end, Hatoyama was forced to reverse his own course and renege on his campaign promise. The attempt to renegotiate an already agreed-upon deal irritated many in the U.S. administration and puzzled Japanese analysts and observers. While the question over the air base location is certainly a hot button issue on Okinawa, Japanese public opinion in general was not especially seized by the question. In fact, in the latter months of the Hatoyama administration, Japanese public opinion became even more supportive of the Japan-U.S. alliance in response to Chinese naval manoeuvres and North Korea’s sinking of a South Korean naval vessel.

Further irritating and confusing foreign relations, during the same period that Hatoyama was zeroing in on the Okinawa base question, Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada began devoting what some considered an inordinate amount of time investigating alleged decades-old secret deals between the U.S. and Japan that supposedly had U.S. nuclear weapons transiting Japanese soil (a violation of Japan’s constitution). While a compelling media event, it compromised Hatoyama’s initial attempts to stake out a more strategic foreign policy framework.

With five new prime ministers in four years, it is not surprising that Japan has been having some difficulty getting its foreign policy act together. Under Prime Minister Kan, with Katsuya Okada retaining his role as foreign minister, no one is expecting any dramatic shifts or major new initiatives in Japanese foreign policy. In fact, one supposes that the Kan government would prefer not to deal with foreign policy-related issues for awhile so that it can address serious domestic economic and social problems that it has pledged to resolve.

Unfortunately for the Kan government, the timing could not be worse. Hatoyama’s final agreement with the U.S. on the base issue is a very broad-brush one, and a great deal of heavy negotiating with the U.S. remains to be done through the summer and fall. The Kan government will have work to do in restoring U.S. confidence, which has been rattled by the Okinawa about-faces.

Japan will host the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Yokohama in November, with dozens of ministerial and sub-ministerial meetings being convened in Japan over the next five months. As host, Japan is expected to demonstrate leadership in the quest to liberalise trade and investment in the region. This will be tough at a time when the Japanese economy is experiencing serious fiscal and growth problems.

Meanwhile, South Korea and the U.S. are urging Japan to align more actively with them in pursuing measures in the UN and elsewhere to punish North Korea for sinking the South’s naval vessel. On the Iran nuclear problem, Japan has not spoken out as much as the EU and the U.S. would have liked, further creating some concern in U.S. policy circles.

Whether it wants it or not, Japan has a hat-full of foreign policy problems to deal with and issues to decide on in the next few months. A number of analysts say that the Hatoyama foreign policy initiatives, however poorly managed and clumsily articulated, were the first signs of a new generation of still-inexperienced political leaders trying to carve out a new role for Japan – more equidistant between the U.S. and China and more concerned with non-traditional security issues, such as climate change. Even more fundamentally, these initiatives are being taken as evidence that the Japanese people are seeking a new and different identify for themselves in the world, distinct from the relationship with the U.S. and focused more on global values and concerns.

Other observers conclude that the Hatoyama government was simply too far out in front of Japanese public opinion on foreign affairs questions. This school of thought sees Japan as being quite comfortable with itself as things now stand, not wishing to put itself too far forward on global strategic issues, and fully backing the continuation and even the strengthening of the security alliance with the U.S. This opinion has Japan looking something like an Asian Switzerland or Sweden – wealthy, responsible, decent, a good world citizen whose support and opinions need to be solicited; but not a global decision-maker.

Whichever view may be correct, Japan’s foreign policy agenda in the near term will be complex, challenging, and likely frustrating. As its ally and best friend, the U.S. needs to show patience and earnestly try to understand which of the two images of Japan is emerging as the real one.

Allen Choate is The Asia Foundation’s Vice President, responsible for the Partners in Asian Development initiative, based in Singapore. He can be reached at achoate@asiafound.org.

1. What’s new in Japanese foreign policy under Kan?
2. New thinking about foreign policy strategy in Japan
3. The next Democratic Party of Japan prime minister

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.

The political situation in Japan has changed dramatically in just 8 months.

The continuing trend of short lived cabinets since Prime Minister Koizumi, of Abe, Fukuda and Aso, has seen international confidence in the Japanese political system sink and itself is exacerbating a sense of political instability in Japan.

How does Japanese politics measure up now?

First there is the disposition of the politicians themselves. The public thought that what Prime Minister Hatoyama was saying made sense and that he had captured the sentiment of the nation. Their expectations and support of him ran high. But his exercise of the responsibilities of office failed to match his rhetoric. Flowery and elegant rhetoric wore thin and Hatoyama’s approval ratings plunged (Mr. Hatoyama!, you too?) as feelings of disappointment in his performance exploded.

But there is no need for the prime minister to step down as soon as he stumbles in the implementation of policy. The problems of ‘Futenma’ and ‘politics and money’ were certainly serious problems. But they weren’t the only problems that weighed on his administration. The problems were more deep seated – impossible to tackle one-by-one, requiring commitment to wholesale social reform across many aspects of society. These problems won’t be solved by short-term one-shot political leaders who have no resolve.

Second, the Japanese media are mesmerised by short term opinion polls, hastily jumping to conclusions and making judgements about the meaning of fluctuations in approval ratings. And the public too are swayed by this. The media and the public need to reflect deeply on this behaviour. US President Obama, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, and Australian Prime Minister Rudd all came to office with high approval ratings. Due to the financial crisis, recession, employment problems and other issues their approval ratings dropped quickly too. By weathering it out, they are sticking to their policy guns and today have relatively stable political administrations.

Naoto Kan became prime minister relatively smoothly, so, from a domestic viewpoint, Hatoyama’s resignation might not appear to be a problem for domestic political stability. But if prime ministers resign on a whim, Japan will produce administration after administration without capability of achieving anything. Each time the people will lose hope and international society’s confidence in Japan will corrode. With the problems Japan confronts today, it cannot afford this merry-go-round of administrations, passing problems off from one administration to the next in a game of political make believe.

Third, Hatoyama’s exit will not solve the problems of Japanese political leadership this time round.  The truth is that Japanese political leadership has a serious problem. In the past, the bureaucracy did the policy spadework and carried politicians with them, exercising power without political responsibility. With the advent of the DPJ government, the public repudiated the system of bureaucracy led government. The ‘government expenditure review program’, for example, shows a stage of political development where the public are groping for the construction of a truly new policymaking process.  This new policy making process requires the construction of institutions for public participation in the policy making process. This will take time.

In the end whoever takes charge of the political administration of Japan will face a tough time from here in. The new prime minister will need conviction and determination and the public and the media will need longer term yardsticks whereby to judge good and bad policies than they commonly have in the past.

Satoshi Amako is Professor and formerly Dean of the Graduate School of Asia Pacific Studies at Waseda University in Tokyo.

This essay was translated by Ben Ascione, a graduate research student at Waseda University.

1. Japanese politics: Ozawa’s last stand?
2. The Ozawa saga continues in Japanese politics
3. The first day of the new era in Japanese politics

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. Low ratings, however, are symptomatic rather than causal. So what lies behind the low ratings? Are Japanese voters so fickle? Well, yes and no. Japanese voters are for the most reacting to incompetence, to the inability to rule, and to the perception of illegitimacy or corruption. Domestic factors which have played a part include the pension’s scandal which undermined Abe, the lack of an Upper House majority which stymied Fukuda, the lack of a political mandate which finished Aso, and financial impropriety which tainted Hatoyama. However, it is the battle over Japan’s foreign policy and security posture which has had the most interesting role in cutting down all four prime ministers, and upon which this article will focus.

One decisive and divisive issue has been the relationship with the United States and how Japan recalibrates itself in the wake of the Cold War. The great paradox of Japan in the 1980s was that it was an economic giant, but a military pygmy; a first-rate power behaving like a satellite. Japanese policy-makers wanted at once to develop a more independent posture, but without jeopardizing the Alliance itself. As China’s economic rise developed into a military rise, this strategy became more attractive and continued North Korean belligerence sealed the deal. The US response following 9/11 was to urge Japan to take on more global responsibilities and to pull more of its weight in security terms. Therein lay the rub. In grossly simplified terms, the right – namely the Liberal Democratic Party – tried to use this equalisation process to roll back constitutional restrictions in an effort to make Japan ‘a normal country’ in military terms. The left – typically the Democratic Party of Japan, the Social Democratic Party, and others – have resisted both the roll-back and reinterpreted the normalisation process. Normalisation, they insist, should emphasise diplomacy and development, remain tied to the United Nations and avoid US military adventurism.

This battle can be seen in the parliamentary squabbling over the refueling mission, the debate on what Japan should do in Afghanistan, and most recently over the Futenma Base issue. While all of this may make it appear that Japan faces an Alliance problem, in fact the problem is more nuanced with that. Japan faces an identity problem. The United States is at times incidental to the domestic debate, as is the relationship with China. All four prime ministers have attempted to answer the question of whether China is Japan’s greatest economic partner or Japan’s greatest strategic worry. Fukuda and Hatoyama favoured the former approach while Abe and Aso seemed inclined towards the latter.

So how has ‘musical prime ministers’ impacted Japan? How has it impacted the region? Well, firstly, Japan’s ability to function during this chaotic process has been miraculous and largely due to its strong bureaucracy, which has maintained the reins of non-politicised policy-making, while surrendering the reins on sensitive issues. The accusation, by DPJ politicians, that Japan’s mandarins run the nation in way that is reminiscent of Sir Humphrey Appleby from the British sitcom ‘Yes, Minister’ is unfair and dodges responsibility. A case in point was how the DPJ assumed policy control of the Futenma base issue, while having little to do with other aspects of defence policy. Remarkably, the decision by Japan to sign a defence agreement with Australia on June 1st – a small but significant event in Japanese post Cold War history – was carried out by the bureaucracy with little fanfare and little political oversight. The machine can tick over, in other words. But is this how it should be? Should Japanese bureaucrats be given the responsibility for leading their state? Obviously not: civil servants are not risk-takers and ticking over is not decision-making. There are other issues such as mending Japan’s ailing defence industry and writing overall Japanese strategy which only worsen without political leadership.

This weekend marks the beginning of the G20 Summit in South Korea. Japan’s finance minister cannot go. Tension over the Cheonan incident continues to rise. Japan has suddenly gone quiet. It is entirely possible that future historians will one day look at this period as the period that China rose to assume a place at the head table. What will they say of Japan? If Japan is unable to address its identity question, its role in the world, they will merely say that Japan was absent.

John Hemmings is Studies Co-ordinator and a research analyst at the Royal United Services Institute for Defence and Security Studies (RUSI), London.

1. Towards a new security consciousness in Japan?
2. What the new Hatoyama government means for the US-Japan alliance
3. Japan: the DPJ preparing to retreat?

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.

However, Obama also said he could not afford to delay a decision much longer because of concerns raised not only in Japan and the United States, but also among neighboring nations in the Asia-Pacific region. Obama said he hoped Hatoyama understood the situation.

Hatoyama told Obama: ‘I will resolve this issue by the end of May. I want to reach a conclusion by then. I ask for your continued cooperation.’ With that comment, Hatoyama had established the end of May as the deadline for resolving the Futenma relocation issue.

Last week, the Hatoyama Cabinet decided to move Futenma to an area near Henoko in Nago, also in Okinawa Prefecture. While that decision indicates that Hatoyama kept his promise to Obama, the area chosen is almost the same as the site included in the 2006 agreement between Japan and the United States on the Futenma relocation. Details must still be worked out, such as the runway construction method.

The political damage from the Social Democratic Party’s decision to leave the ruling coalition over the Futenma issue resulted in Hatoyama announcing his resignation Wednesday. And it still remains unclear if a relationship of trust between Japan and the United States can be restored.

The government led by the Democratic Party of Japan has lacked gravitas when dealing with the Japan-US alliance, which is a life-and-death matter for Japan’s foreign affairs and national security. Hatoyama’s own words underscored that shortcoming when he promised during the campaign for last year’s Lower House election to relocate Futenma out of Okinawa Prefecture, at the minimum.

After his ‘trust me’ pledge to Obama, Hatoyama explained he was leaning toward the Henoko move because he learned about the important deterrent role played by US Marines based in Japan. In addition, the Hatoyama administration was not thorough in its analysis of the situation and overly optimistic about how matters would play out. Those factors, along with a shallow understanding of the issues, led to a deep rift in the alliance with the United States.

The alliance cannot be maintained without trust, and the crisis arising from that lack of trust continues between Japan and the United States.

There were several crucial moments in the process of reaching a decision on Futenma.

The first stumbling block for Hatoyama was last November, when he uttered his ‘trust me’ comment. Hatoyama later exacerbated matters when he flip-flopped and said a Futenma decision would be delayed. At a meeting held in Tokyo on December 3-4 between Cabinet-level officials, Japanese officials suddenly told their US counterparts that a decision on Futenma by year-end was practically impossible. The officials explained they had to change course to maintain the ruling coalition with the SDP, which had long called for moving Futenma either out of Okinawa or out of Japan and was opposed to the 2006 agreement.

US officials could barely conceal their frustration, asking their Japanese counterparts, ‘Which are you going to choose, the Japan-US alliance, or the SDP, which opposes that alliance?’

US officials had taken Hatoyama’s ‘trust me’ pledge as a secret pact between the prime minister and president to resolve the Futenma issue by year-end along the lines of the 2006 agreement.

On the evening of December 4, Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa told Akihisa Nagashima, a defense parliamentary secretary: ‘Until yesterday we were discussing policy, but from today the focus is on the politics. Mr. Nagashima, our job is to protect the prime minister.’ Behind the Japanese decision to put off resolving the Futenma issue was the DPJ’s need to obtain the cooperation of its ruling coalition partners in compiling the fiscal 2010 government budget by the year-end.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano reflected on what went on in December.

‘The judgment that a year-end resolution of the Futenma issue was impossible was made because priority was placed on compiling the government budget by December 25,’ he said. ‘If we had let the SDP go, discussions in the Budget Committee would have been impossible. We had to ask for cooperation on the budget even if it meant prostrating ourselves. We were thinking about what happened to the Hosokawa administration.’

Prime Minister Morihiro Hosokawa’s government, in which Hatoyama served as a deputy chief Cabinet secretary, lost momentum when it failed to compile the government budget by the end of 1993.

For its part, the United States began having grave doubts about the Hatoyama administration. Last December, a high-ranking official of the Obama administration told me about the ‘fundamental doubt’ held by the United States. ‘We are uncertain about how committed Prime Minister Hatoyama is to the Japan-US alliance,’ the official said. ‘Doubts began to grow that there were completely different strategic views of the alliance between Prime Minister Hatoyama and the United States.

‘Secondly, there was the casualness of his words and a lack of consideration for the effect that his own comments would have. There was also the matter of leaving Japan’s national security policy mortgaged to the SDP, which had taken a hostile stance on the alliance.’

Hatoyama’s next blunder was trying to have Tokunoshima island in Kagoshima Prefecture serve as an alternative relocation site. The Nago mayoral election in January was won by a candidate opposed to having Futenma functions moved to the city. That made the possibility of implementing the 2006 agreement much more difficult.

For those reasons, moving the Futenma functions outside of Okinawa and to Tokunoshima must have appeared even more appealing. However, the United States rejected moving the helicopter group to Tokunoshima because it was unworkable from a military operational standpoint. While the United States showed flexibility about moving some training exercises to Tokunoshima, that was likely designed to show Washington taking a conciliatory stance.

The Hatoyama administration described the 2006 agreement made while the Liberal Democratic Party was in control of government as being ‘immersed in vested interests and harmful to the environment.’ While administration officials ran around in search of a ‘magic wand’ that would produce an alternative relocation site, they failed to conduct an expert evaluation of whether candidate sites were feasible from a military standpoint.

In that sense, the Tokunoshima proposal was a symbolic example. Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano led another effort to dig up an alternative relocation site, which resulted in a proposal to move Futenma functions off the coast of White Beach in Okinawa. However, the United States never took that proposal seriously, and it died quickly.

With Hatoyama pushing Tokunoshima and Hirano trumpeting White Beach, Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada, who was in favor of retaining the 2006 agreement, remained on the sidelines. In other words, the key players of the Hatoyama Cabinet were not working in sync.

The final turning point was the 10-minute conversation between Hatoyama and Obama.

In late March, Okada told Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in Washington that it might be difficult to return to the 2006 agreement because of the various proposals being raised. US officials would make no further concessions, and the 10-minute talk was, in effect, Obama’s ultimatum that the issue had to be resolved by returning to the 2006 agreement.

What lessons can be gained from this Futenma process?

The first is that policy must be finalised before any consideration is made of politics. In that process, policy experts must be relied upon, and the policy decision-making process must be strengthened. Any government in which Cabinet ministers make separate proposals and comments cannot be called a government.

The second lesson is to learn from the wisdom contained in old ideas and to develop an immunity to the toxins that may lie within new ideas. That means correcting the habits developed as an opposition party of opposing each and every policy pushed by the previous government and jumping on the bandwagon for any new policy framework.

The third lesson is that any coalition government should conduct detailed discussions in advance and reach agreement on the core elements of national security policy.

The drift in the Japan-US alliance should not be solely blamed on the ‘loopy’ nature of Hatoyama’s personality. The lack of interest in national security policy as well as a lack of policy realism may be nothing more than a reflection of ourselves as a people who have failed to deal seriously with the national security of Japan and the world, while being placed under the protection of the United States–and on the sacrifices made by Okinawa–throughout the postwar era.

It is obvious that the DPJ government was ill-prepared and ill-equipped to deal adequately with foreign affairs and national security policy. Before taking on their roles, the Cabinet ministers placed in charge of foreign affairs and national security did not meet with prime ministers, foreign ministers or defense ministers of LDP governments for briefings.

If this latest crisis has the effect of educating not just the DPJ, but also the Japanese people, about the importance and dangers associated with national security policy, then it will not have been an entirely negative experience in the long run.

It is desirable to have a bipartisan consensus between the largest ruling and opposition parties on the core elements of national security policy, in particular the Japan-US alliance.

That will be a strategic issue for developing greater trust in a Japan that has entered an age in which a change of government is the norm.

his article was first published here at the Asahi Shimbun.

Yoichi Funabashi is Editor-in-Chief of the Asahi Shimbun in Tokyo.

1. Towards a new security consciousness in Japan?
2. Japan: the DPJ preparing to retreat?
3. Hatoyama accommodates the US on Futenma

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.

The good news is that his successor should, to a certain extent, have an opportunity to press the reset button, seeing just how much dissatisfaction with the prime minister was behind growing dissatisfaction with the DPJ. The bad news is that Hatoyama will leave his successor the poison pill of the latest agreement over Futenma, which the public overwhelmingly opposes and which appears to be more or less unimplementable, and with an uphill battle for the House of Councillors next month. And that’s without mentioning lingering problems concerning the long-term future of the Japanese economy.

And so the US gets its wish: the ‘loopy’ Hatoyama is gone, having overstayed his welcome and squandered whatever goodwill last year’s election earned him. His successor — whoever he is (given that in all likelihood the DPJ will plan for a smooth transition to Kan or Okada) — will have to set to work immediately fixing the DPJ’s standing with the public, starting with yet another attempt to fix Futenma in a way that satisfies Okinawans and the general public.  He’ll also have to do what Hatoyama failed to do: make Ozawa serve the prime minister, another failure that ultimately doomed Hatoyama. The US, meanwhile, would be wise to give the new prime minister plenty of space this time around.

It seems that in addition to Hatoyama’s resigning from the premiership, Ozawa Ichirō will resign as secretary-general of the DPJ.

If Ozawa does resign — together with his lieutenants in various leadership positions within the DPJ with him — and actually manages to retire from politics and not try to run the party from the shadows, the twin resignations of Hatoyama and Ozawa may actually provide the DPJ with an opportunity to reclaim the hope that accompanied the party’s victory last year.

That Hatoyama and Ozawa were at the head of the new regime when the DPJ took power was a bit strange. Of course they were among the party’s most senior and experienced politicians. There really was no alternative, and no other candidate — aside from Okada — was capable of challenging last year’s passing of the torch from Ozawa and Hatoyama (thanks to Maehara Seiji’s disastrous tenure as party leader). But these two hereditary politicians whose careers began in the LDP wound up at the head of a parliamentary majority composed largely of newcomers to politics, very few of whom had relatives in politics. The DPJ’s promise was less in its policy program, aside from its institutional reforms, than in the new blood it injected into the Japanese political system. But between their corruption scandals and the fact that no one could tell just what Ozawa’s role was in policymaking, the DPJ diarchy managed to squander its new majority.

More than Hatoyama’s, Ozawa’s departure provides the DPJ with a chance to reclaim some of the energy. It will enable a party leadership to abandon Ozawa’s courtship of fading interest groups and focus once again on speaking to floating voters. Inevitably the next secretary-general will not overshadow the prime minister, meaning that the secretary-general might actually help the prime minister sell his policies to the public while corralling the party’s backbenchers.

At the same time, however, the new secretary-general will not inspire the same fear in the party’s backbenchers. The result could be more give and take between the leadership and the rank-and-file — or it could be complete chaos.

Ultimately it will depend on the prime minister, whether Kan, Okada, or someone else entirely. With decisive leadership at the top the policymaking system the DPJ tried to put in place when it took power might work better than it did under Hatoyama.

This post is a combination of two short pieces from Observing Japan. Check Observing Japan for updates and further analysis.

1. The ‘Ozawa Regime’ and the future of the DPJ
2. Casting off the old regime: The DPJ’s real challenge
3. Japan: The virtues of Kan