Fukuda tells the Washington Post that Asia is Japan’s top responsibility, sending a signal to the United States on Japan’s expired Afghanistan refueling mission. This is also a departure from Abe and Aso’s aspiration to “Eurasian” reach.

It wasn’t too long ago that then-Foreign Minister Aso Taro declared that Japan would work for an “arc of freedom and prosperity” (自由と繁栄の弧) reaching across the Eurasian landmass. Aso’s rhetoric, which was to set out a foreign policy framework for the newly minted premiership of Abe Shinzo, made some people uncomfortable because of its echoes of history—no doubt partially because of Abe and Aso’s general hawkishness.

Now, after the implosion of the Abe government and the rocky start for Prime Minister Fukuda Yasuo, a man who was initially seen as an agent for stability, Japan is changing its foreign policy footing. Ahead of Fukuda’s first visit to the United States as prime minister, he gave an interview to the Washington Post. “I believe the heaviest responsibility for Japan is to see to it that there is stability and prosperity in Asia,” Fukuda said, while also calling the U.S.–Japan alliance the “very foundation” of his foreign policy.

Japanese-U.S. ties have been destabilized (if only slightly) recently by the refusal of the Japanese legislature, where the upper house is controlled by Japan’s opposition, to renew Japan’s refueling mission in support of a primarily U.S. military action in Afghanistan. Predictably, this drew attention from U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates on his trip to Asia last week. But as Tobias Harris writes, changes in China loom large in the U.S.–Japan alliance. Here’s Tobias, quoting Gates’ speech last week at Sofia University in Tokyo:

Most pressingly, the alliance has yet to coordinate an approach to China. To some, it is a bulwark against China. To others—and I think it’s safe to include Mr. Gates in this category—the stronger the U.S.–Japan alliance, the better able it will be to reach out to China and work on incorporating China into the regional security architecture. As Mr. Gates says of China, “I do not see China as a strategic adversary. It is a competitor in some respects and partner in others. While we candidly acknowledge our differences, it is important to strengthen communications and to engage the Chinese on all facets of our relationship to build mutual understanding and confidence.”

Fukuda’s emphasis on Asia, if not an isolated statement, could represent at least an orientation toward improving its relations with regional powers. It certainly would seem to reflect the reality of Japanese politics over involvement with U.S. military action.

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Footnote: Gates’ not-adversary-but-competitor line also reminds me of Obama, for what it’s worth.

Ampontan criticizes English-language media for their “[m]indlessly parroted assumptions based on conventional wisdom” that lead to their labeling Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo as a “nationalist.” The entry notes Abe’s hands-off approach thus far on the disputed island situations with Korea and Russia as evidence that he is no “hawkish nationalist.” Observing Japan, on the other hand, argues that, for a variety of reasons, Abe can reasonably be called a nationalist:

What makes Abe a nationalist has little if anything to do with his ideas about Japan’s place in the world and more to do with his vision of Japanese society. In short, Abe and his allies in the LDP want to use the state to recreate a more unified Japan as a means of coping with the problems Japan will face in the twenty-first century. What makes Abe a nationalist is his desire to forge (or re-forge) a kind of dynamic unity among the Japanese people, under the rule of the emperor, of course. As he said in his debate with Ozawa Ichiro this week, “If Japan’s long history, traditions and cultures can be likened to a tapestry that the Japanese people have been weaving, the emperor is the warp.”

An interesting question if we’re talking about Japanese nationalism in a historical sense is whether Abe or Koizumi is indeed the bigger nationalist. The nation-building (i.e. unifying) efforts by the Meiji government prominently featured the symbolism of the Yasukuni Shrine, and they used Yasukuni as a place to show off Japan’s new pride in regarding itself as a modern nation. The shrine was strategically located on a Kudan Hill, which then separated upper- and lower-class areas of Tokyo, with the idea of symbolizing unity. Kudan Hill is also conveniently right across the street from the Imperial Palace Grounds, lest you would forget how important the emperor was to the emerging Japanese nation-state. (An excellent source for the early history of the shrine is Akiko Takenaka’s dissertation on Meiji nationalist architecture: Takenaka-O’Brien, Akiko. “The Aesthetics of Mass Persuasion: War and Architectural Sites in Tokyo, 1868-1945.” Yale University, 2004.)

As we know, Koizumi spent much more time and international political capital than Abe has in paying tribute to Japan’s late 19th—early 20th century nationalism. But Abe has spent more energy on a more contemporary and more instrumental form of nationalism, the revision of Article 9. The rhetoric behind constitutional revision—especially among the people usually called “nationalists”—often invokes the desire for Japan to become a “normal state.”

Indeed, as currently constituted, Japan lacks one of the main characteristics of an independent sovereign state: the ability to use force or the threat of force as an instrument of foreign policy. The result is a relationship with the United States that puts its status somewhere in the area between protectorate and strategic ally. Though Japan could theoretically cast off U.S. ties without changing its constitution, the security environment makes this highly unlikely. Changing the constitution would, for better or for worse, strengthen Japan’s independence as a state.

So my verdict: People like Abe who favor constitutional revision are “practical nationalists,” whereas people like Koizumi who pay tribute to late 19th century nationalist traditions are “sentimental nationalists.”

Shisaku has a snarky roundup of Abe Shinzo’s recent visit to the United States. Here’s the blog’s response to Abe’s hinting that maybe “the past is the past.”

“The 20th century was a century that human rights were violated in many parts of the world. So we have to make the 21st century a century — a wonderful century in which no human rights are violated. And I, myself, and Japan wish to make significant contributions to that end. And so I explained these thoughts to the President.”

First–uh, Abe-san, we are already six years into the 21st century. Believe me, rights have been violated.

Second–are you out of your freaking mind? Just because the date on Gregorian calendars start with a 2, we have to kiss off thinking about what happened in the past? (For all you on Jewish, Chinese or Hejirah calendars, you are not in the 21st century. You are on your own as to whether to violate or not violate human rights)

What’s come out of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s visit in Tokyo? Well, the Associated Press has a quick list. Here are the parts that might actually be news, instead of reiterations of things like agreeing to work for a nuclear weapons-free Korean peninsula:

• Agreements to work for a successor to the Kyoto Protocol and to work on more energy efficient technology got a higher profile in this meeting than they had before, but are not exactly new proposals unless other details emerge.
• AP reports that the leaders agreed to “[s]trengthen cooperation in defense policy, including reciprocal visits by warships.” This could be real progress toward the reduction of mutual fear and could contribute to regional security, since joint military activities educate sailors about their counterparts, potentially lowering tension in flash-point situations.
• An agreement to “[s]peed up Japan’s cleanup of chemical weapons left in China from the World War II era” may have been a calculated concession by Abe, given his nationalism and hard stance on history.
• Agreeing to “face up to history” may sound like something, but it’s been said over and over by Japanese leaders apparently with little relation to actual actions, conciliatory or not.
• There was more talk about another Abe visit to China this, following up on last year’s after he entered office. This may be the first mention of a possible visit by Chinese President Hu Jintao to Japan in 2008.
• And as Japan weighs whether to join the United States in WTO action over Chinese intellectual property practices, the two sides agreed to “[w]ork together to promote intellectual property rights.”

AP has no mention of an expected decision by China to allow Japanese rice imports. But this list may not be comprehensive. I’ll have my eyes out for more over the coming days. I haven’t seen anything on so-called “comfort women” yet either, but it would not be unusual for that issue to go undiscussed in public during the diplomatic visit.

UPDATE: There’s that rice agreement.

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in an interview with Kyodo gave a standard warning against any visit by Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo to the Yasukuni Shrine leading up to Wen’s visit to Tokyo next week. This would not be the least bit surprising, except that Abe hasn’t visited the shrine since taking office. Either Wen has information that Abe might consider a visit, or he has other people to satisfy with a tiny bit of tough talk on Japan leading up to his visit.

Beats me.

Surrounding Australian Prime Minister John Howard’s trip to Japan this weekend, Japanese PM Abe Shinzo “expressed an unfeigned apology to ‘comfort women.’” Or did was the headline that he “trie[d] damage control over WW2 sex slaves”?

If you ask the Chinese official news agency, which often serves as an outlet for the Chinese government’s scoldings of Japanese leaders for “inappropriate” statements on history, Abe really meant it. In a report offering almost no details, Xinhua writes:

TOKYO, March 11 (Xinhua) — Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Sunday expressed unfeigned apology to “comfort women” who were forced by Japan’s then military government into sex slavery during World War II.

In a TV program of NHK earlier in the day, Abe also reiterated that his government will not change the policy of honoring the Kono statement.

…

The prime minister’s remarks were a big conversion from what he said on Thursday, when he hinted a reinvestigation of the facts unearthed in 1993 by the previous official probe which gave birth to the Kono statement in the same year. …

In what I’ve come to know as the language of Xinhua stories, my hunch is this reflects a desire among the decision-makers in Chinese media to put the “comfort women” aside. Reuters, under the more skeptical headline quoted above, has some more detail:

On Sunday, Abe repeated that the 1993 apology remained in effect. “We have stated our heartfelt apologies to the ‘comfort women’ at the time who suffered greatly and were injured in their hearts,” Abe said in an interview with NHK television. “I want to say that that sentiment has not changed at all.”

The furore precedes a visit to Tokyo in mid-April by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao and Abe’s trip to Washington later that month.

In a sign the Bush administration was growing concerned, U.S. Ambassador Thomas Schieffer last week advised Tokyo not to renege on the 1993 apology, known as the “Kono Statement” after the chief cabinet secretary in whose name it was issued.

“No friend of Japan would want Japan to back away from the Kono Statement,” Schieffer told Japanese reporters on Friday

The Reuters article quotes a Sofia University political science professor as saying that the U.S. headlines surrounding this story might have led the Abe team to worry about the opinions of the Japanese public. “When Asian governments criticise Japan, no one cares but when it’s reported in the New York Times, they have to react,” said the professor, Nakano Koichi. “They care about the American elite being upset.”

Let’s see what Rep. Honda has to say about this on the Hill Thursday.

Just joining us? See this entry and this follow-up.

New developments:

• U.S. Deputy Secretary of State John Negroponte would not comment on Abe’s specific words, but AP reports:
  

  “Our view is that what happened during the war was most deplorable,” he said when asked about the sex slave issue. “But … as far as some kind of resolution of this issue, this is something that must be dealt with between Japan and the countries that were affected.”

• Occidentalism posts two Korean newspaper ads from 1944 seeking 慰安婦, or “comfort women,” who were promised what amounts to a salary and a signing bonus. From the post:
  

  The newspaper ads suggest that, at least in Korea, the recruitment of “comfort women” was open, legitimate, and socially acceptable. They are also evidence that the women were well paid. For example, a commenter going by the name of “Void” wrote that the salary of a lieutenant in the Imperial Japanese Army was only 110 yen per month, which means that the women would have been receiving almost triple the salary of a Japanese army lieutenant.

  Even the Kono Statement acknowledged that some women were recruited in the open and some by force. The ads certainly don’t imply “legitimate and socially acceptable.” Just because you can buy something from a newspaper ad doesn’t mean society thinks it’s OK. Further, the newspaper may have been controlled by Japanese forces, and under imperial administration, it would be misleading to say open press reflected the norms of the people being dominated.

• Meanwhile, a Korean woman who has spoken out at the U.S. Congress about her experience as a sex slave reemphasized to reporters in broken Japanese her experience of abduction and brutal rape during enslavement. Hers is only one example of several that have surfaced in the day’s press reports. Here’s Lee Yong-soo, 78:
  

  “I cried ‘mother, mother,’ but they never stopped. They used electric shocks to torture me. They kicked me. They cut me,” she said tearfully in broken Japanese.

  “After I returned home after the war, I did not tell anyone about what happened to me,” she said.

  She said she has been staging protests for 16 years outside the Japanese embassy in Seoul to demand an apology.

  “Japan forcibly took me away. I am a living witness. I will tell my story wherever,” she said. “I demand the prime minister of Japan apologise.”

  I don’t have any independent information on this woman’s account, but what she describes sounds a lot like “coercion” to me.

Japan Probe has a good entry that digs up the transcript for the October statement I referred to twice previously. Abe was responding to questions from Shii Kazuo, the chair of the executive committee of the Japanese Communist Party, and insisted that his cabinet would follow the Kono Statement. Abe said his previous questioning of the statement centered around the issue of whether middle school students ought to be taught about the “comfort stations” and around the definition of “coercion.” Here’s a portion of what Abe said under Shii’s questioning:

Abe: My understanding at that time was that the Kono statement was intended to admit that the Japanese government was involved in the establishment and management of the comfort stations and the recruitment of comfort women, express apologies and remorse for that, and promise to study in what way the government should express its apology and remorse. At the time, I questioned whether a junior high school textbook should include descriptions of military comfort women. For example, I thought it was necessary to first take into account the state of children’s development. I also thought it important to ascertain whether there was coercion in the narrow sense of the word. I said that if there are differences of opinion regarding the facts, we may have to reconsider including the material in the textbook.

I said that nothing substantiates the fact of coercion in the narrow sense of the word. When I discussed this issue, I pointed out that the name of YOSHIDA Seiji cited in textbooks as a person in charge of the recruitment of comfort women was later found to be a mistake. That was a question I raised in my statement. [Full transcript mirrored here.]

James’ post at Japan Probe also points to Matt of Occidentalism’s more accurate translation of Abe’s recent statement:

「当初定義されていた強制性を裏付ける証拠がなかったのは事実だ」

“It is a fact there was no proof to support coercion as it was initially defined”

「定義が大きく変わったことを前提に考えなければならない」

“We must premise it [the kono statement about comfort women] on the thought that the definition of it [coercion] had been greatly changed from its [initial] definition”

The English language media (including my previous post, which was dashed off rather quickly) did not accurately represent the fact that Abe’s statement is hedged in language about the definition of coercion. It’s important to understand the subtleties of the rhetoric Abe is using when considering the domestic audience, but in international affairs, this sort of slight misquote is standard procedure. It may be that with slipping poll numbers, Abe finds it necessary to appeal to his long-time base: rightists and nationalists in the LDP.

In the politics of 20th century East Asian history, the Japanese wartime practice of using women as sex slaves under the putrid euphemism “comfort women” is comparable only to the Nanjing Massacre and the Yasukuni Shrine in its prominence. In 1993, Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, Kono Yohei, acknowledged that “comfort stations” had existed and that military and government officials directly engaged in “recruitment” of sex slaves.

The Kono Statement hardly apologized for the full horror of the practice, but now Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo is nonetheless backing away from Kono’s half-measure acknowledgment. “The fact is, there is no evidence to prove there was coercion,” Abe said, according to AP. “We have to take it from there.”

This comes after Abe in October said his administration would “inherit” the Kono Statement, despite the fact that he had spoken out against it previously.

Meanwhile in the United States:

Several members of the U.S. House of Representatives have drafted a nonbinding resolution calling for Abe to “formally acknowledge, apologize and accept historical responsibility” for using “comfort women” during the war.

Supporters want an apology similar to the one the U.S. government gave to Japanese-Americans forced into internment camps during World War II.

More on this later.

The Yasukuni Shrine may be making an exit from the rhetoric of Sino-Japanese tensions. The Chinese ambassador to Japan said in a report published yesterday that China and Japan have “finally overcome this political impediment damaging bilateral relations.”

“The political stalemate has been broken,” the ambassador, Wang Yi, said in an interview with Xinhua. But don’t think this means China will be letting Japan out of the grips of history-infused public diplomacy. If Abe Shinzo decides to visit the shrine—he hasn’t said whether he will—then the Yasukuni rhetoric may make a solid comeback.

Meanwhile, Wang turned to great power competition as a rhetorical frame for China–Japan tensions.

“Many of the conflicts and friction in China–Japan relations in recent years have surfaced over the Yasukuni Shrine issue, but the broader background is that the national strength of both countries has risen to differing degrees,” he said.

Wang also suggested that Tokyo was having trouble accepting China’s emergence as a regional power with trade and political clout.

“A senior Japanese official told me that China’s development and rise is a fact we must face up to, but just as the United States in the 1980s could not adjust to Japan’s rise, now many in Japan are not mentally prepared to accept China’s development,” Wang said.

That’s no joke when you look at recent numbers from the Pew Global Attitudes Project that show populations of Asian states aren’t exactly warm toward their neighbors. Foreign Policy’s Passport blog interprets the numbers to mean Asians aren’t buying China’s “peaceful rise” narrative (as enunciated primarily by Zheng Bijian). I think that might be a leap of logic, but either way, 70 percent of Japanese and 71 percent of Chinese have unfavorable views of each other. There is no shortage of minds to be changed.