Both governments have stated that the whaling issue will not damage that broader relationship. Yet the whaling issue and the policy struggles of the new Hatoyama government highlight how domestic politics can intrude on foreign policy and the risks to good foreign policy that arise when leaders falter.
The Okada visit represents is a good time to take stock of the Australia-Japan relationship. First, the positives.
Foreign Minister Okada’s other major meeting on Saturday was with Defence Minister John Faulkner. That meeting gave further momentum to the detailed December 2009 bilateral action plan to implement the landmark Joint Declaration on Security Cooperation. The Joint Declaration is of both symbolic and practical importance – under its rubric are held the 2+2 annual meeting of defence and foreign ministers. Australia only has other such agreements with the UK and the USA, and Japan with the USA. Much effort is being invested currently in developing logistics cooperation and operational interfaces between the two defence forces. Yet, as other contributors to this Forum have noted, the US-Japan alliance presents a political quandary for the Hatoyama Government.
Futenma is Hatoyama’s whale. Like first-termer Rudd, the Japanese Prime Minister bears the baggage of political concessions made while still out of power.
Bringing the left-wing Social Democratic Party into Coalition, with the aim of securing an upper house majority, has sharply diminished its political latitude on the US bases issue. It is unlikely that Rudd ever seriously thought that Japan would relent on whaling in response to Australian diplomatic overtures. Hatoyama seems to have been more naïve in relation to the prospects of renegotiating the realignment of US forces and Okada himself has had bouts of ill-disciplined ‘thinking out loud’ on alternatives.
Yoichi Funabashi offers an excellent account of the role of nationalism in the post-war politics of opposition to the US-Japan Security Treaty. Funabashi notes how such sentiments ‘appear to lie like embers in the hearts’ of the current DJP leadership. The one welcome consequence of the Futenma fuss is that it has drawn many mainstream conservatives, including the Yomiuri Shimbun editorialists, into active support of the American alliance. Opinion polls also suggest strong public support for the alliance and dissatisfaction with mismanagement of the bases issue even while sympathising with the circumstances of Okinawa residents.
Japanese nationalism (or ideas of Japanese particularism) can impact directly on Australia’s broader interests in the bilateral relationship, not least because they mask vested interests. In assembling its governing coalition, the DPJ not only brought perhaps the most vociferous economic nationalist and anti-‘market fundamentalism’ member of the Diet into Cabinet but gave him a key economic portfolio. Shizuka Kamei, leader of the minor People’s New Party, and a former LDP rebel who split over postal privatisation, is now instrumental in undoing that and other reforms from the Koizumi era. Market liberalisation is thoroughly out of vogue, and the DPJ’s strong trade union linkages are already reflecting in policy reversals.
Despite strong declarations of intent from both the Australia and Japanese governments on negotiating a free trade (economic partnership) agreement, the immediate prospects for a comprehensive agreement seem dim. It is difficult to imagine any progress prior to upper house elections mid-year and probably not afterwards because the DPJ does not want to alienate its new-found regional constituencies.
Nor is APEC is likely provide an impetus for developing Japan’s own blueprint for economic reform.
Economic complementary is the bedrock of the bilateral relationship and that will continue. Yet some issues are likely to arise. Threats of competition policy challenges to consolidation in the Australian resources industry can be anticipated. But there are problems on the horizon there too, concerns about the Rio Tinto-BHP iron ore joint venture and Chinese direct equity stakes in Australian projects among them. Despite upbeat official statements, Japanese tourist numbers are shrinking; Japanese tourist numbers ranked only fifth in 2009 and their average length-of-stay remains short. So too are Japanese student numbers in segments such as ELICOS. The Hatoyama Government’s new agricultural income support measures cost almost the entire savings of its much heralded cutbacks to wasteful LDP legacy programs. It was also couched in terms of boosting Japan’s food self-sufficiency ratio to 50 per cent: an unlikely but worrying development for Australia.
The whaling issue is so frustrating precisely because Japan’s pro-whaling policy preferences are intimately tied up with conceptions of food and maritime resource security; with the added spice of cultural particularism and small-scale vested economic interests in the limited whaling fleet. Australia’s vociferous position on whaling (sustainability, species specificity?, cruelty?) is grist to the mill of Japanese critics of international reliance on foreign food and energy sources; especially in the context of negotiations over a free trade agreement.
Further political realignment in Japan may come sooner rather than later. In such a political climate, economic reforms as part of a bilateral trade deal with Australia or anybody else are a long way down the track.
Dr Pokarier is associate professor in the School of Liberal International Studies at Waseda University, Tokyo.