Japanese Foreign Minister Aso Taro on Thursday unveiled the new foreign policy rhetoric for Prime Minister Abe’s leadership: the “arc of freedom and prosperity” (自由と繁栄の弧). From Yomiuri Shimbun:

“Another new core policy will be added to the basis of Japan’s diplomacy, strengthening the Japan-U.S. alliance and enhancing relations with neighboring countries, including China, South Korea and Russia,” Aso said at a lecture organized by the Japan Institute of International Affairs at a Tokyo hotel.

Aso said the government would:

• Employ “value diplomacy” that emphasizes “universal values” such as democracy, freedom, human rights, rule of law and a market economy.
• Be actively involved in establishing the arc of freedom and prosperity, which will connect a band of emerging democracies around the Eurasian continent.

None of this is ground-breaking, but in English, the new “arc” sounds awkwardly similar to the Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere (大東亜共栄圏), which isn’t exactly a memory Japan needs to conjure in its neighbors.

Chinese State Councillor Tang Jiaxuan, who in September said Abe Shinzo would have to behave himself on the Yasukuni Shrine issue as a precondition for a meeting with the Chinese president after becoming prime minister, told a Japanese minister that China and Japan are at a “new starting point.”

“The two countries have already broken the five-year-long political stalemate and brought bilateral ties to the normal track of development,” the official Xinhua news agency quoted Tang as telling visiting Japanese Minister of Land, Infrastructure and Transport Fuyushiba Tetsuzo.

“Standing at a new starting point, the two sides should work closely to add momentum to the long-term and stable development of their relations,” Tang said. [Reuters]

If an English-language article about Koizumi Junichiro ever appeared without the word “maverick,” I didn’t notice. But now Abe Shinzo might get to be one of the cool kids too. Bono praised Japan for its anti-poverty funding in the ’90s and its aid in Southeast Asia after meeting Abe Wednesday. And he may have called the new prime minister “cool.”

“I’ve always seen George Bush looking at my sunglasses … and George Bush never put them on,” Bono said. “The last pope put them on, and Prime Minister Abe — very cool.”

Reuters asserts that Bono was calling Abe cool, but I think he might have been referring to the act of putting on the sunglasses, not the politician himself. One way or another, we know Bono locates Abe on the “cool” scale somewhere between Koizumi and Bush, because he said he was disappointed not to have discussed music with Abe as he had with the Maverick. Not to worry, Bono said, “Next meeting, I’ll get him on that.”

During the Koizumi administration, I signed up for the Kantei’s weekly e-mail magazine. Every now and then, Koizumi would reveal some slight variation of his language on the Yasukuni Shrine, which was big news for me when I was researching Yasukuni rhetoric.

I never canceled the subscription, so now I get the Abe administration’s newsletter. I was hoping I’d find some crack about his meetings this week with Hu Jintao and George W. Bush at the APEC summit, but what I found was a bit more interesting.

Abe Shinzo is teaching English! The popularity of learning English in Japan is much discussed, and still probably little understood. But here’s the bureaucracy’s contribution. From the Japanese edition of the newsletter:

＜メルマガで学ぶ時事英語＞

　問題：教育基本法は英語で何というでしょう？

　→答えは今週の英語版メルマガで！登録はこちらから！！

Study Current Events English With the E-mail Magazine

Problem: How do you say Kyouikukihonhou in English?

→The answer is in the English edition of this week’s e-mail magazine! Sign up here!

The answer came in my e-mail, because I generally read it in English:

- Answer to the quiz in the Japanese Version E-mail Magazine

Q: How do you say “kyouiku-kihon-hou” in English?
A: Fundamental Law of Education.

They’re running a week behind: Abe’s plan to revise the Fundamental Law of Education was the topic of last week’s newsletter. But not only are they inserting English quizzes into the weekly newsletter, they’re pushing their Japanese-language audience to sign up for the English version. It’d be nice if the newsletter from the White House would encourage, say, Spanish learning. After all about 10 percent of U.S. residents are native Spanish speakers, and as many as a third have some knowledge of the language.

I don’t think many informed commentators really thought the calls of Nakasone and others would lead to a nuclear Japan any time soon, but it’s notable that Prime Minister Abe Shinzo pledged to Chinese President Hu Jintao at the APEC summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, that Japan would remain a non-nuclear state. Indeed, if a Japanese government decided to develop a nuclear capability, it would be soon in coming. But because the Japanese public still opposes a nuclear military—and, perhaps more significantly, Japan has no immediate need for a non-U.S. deterrent—Japan has little motivation to apply its nuclear savvy to weaponry.

According to Reuters: “Our country is the only one in the world to have suffered a nuclear attack,” Abe said. “We have to take the lead in persuading the world to give up nuclear weapons.”

Which implies the reduction of U.S. and Russian arsenals and a commitment to nonproliferation in general. We’ll see what this rhetoric amounts to.

Huang Xinyuan says Sino-Japanese relations have recovered. That’s after Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s second meeting with President Hu Jintao this weekend at the APEC summit in Hanoi, and after five years of stilted relations during Koizumi Junichiro’s leadership in Japan.

“Since Prime Minister Abe’s visit to China,” Huang Xingyuan, Councilor with China’s Foreign Ministry, said today in Hanoi, “China-Japan relations have improved dramatically and are now back on track.”

The two leaders met today.

“The talks today were constructive and positive and will definitely improve China-Japan relations,” said Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing Saturday. …

“This is a sign that both countries relations are improving and developing, and that progress is being made,” Hu told Abe, according to a pool statement released to reporters today. “China-Japan relations will be at this important juncture for some time and it is important that both countries’ leaders work toward developing relations in the right direction.” …

“We will continue to talk about the East China Sea,” Huang said, “and we’ll make the East China Sea an area of peace.”

Japan has urged China to stop exploration in the area until the two energy-hungry nations can set up a system for joint use of the reserves.

Japan earlier this month filed a protest with Beijing about Chinese activity in the area after detecting flames from an apparent burn-off of oil or gas — a possible sign that China was advancing its development of the disputed reserves.

The contentious issue of the Yasukuni Shrine was not discussed among the two leaders today, a Japanese government official told reporters on the condition he not be named.

Reuters reports that the leaders of the United States, Japan, and China will meet in Hanoi:

China, Japan and the United States will “exchange views on bilateral ties and international and regional issues of common concern” on the sidelines of an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting in Hanoi, the official Xinhua news agency reported in a brief dispatch.

In an “aging society,” it stands to reason that some colleges and universities might have trouble attracting students in Japan. And, as we all know, institutions of higher learning need revenue like any other organization. For some schools, reports Tak Kamakura of Bloomberg News, this means recruiting Chinese students to fill classrooms.

Kamakura writes, “While 52 percent of Japanese 18-year-olds are attending college this year, up from 46 percent a decade ago, their numbers dropped to 1.4 million in 2005 from 2.1 million in 1992, according to the Education Ministry.”

Chinese diplomats educated in Japan have traditionally played a key role in the two countries’ understanding. When a new generation of internationally-educated bureaucrats and diplomats come to power in China and Japan, a generation for whom World War II is history, not memory, perhaps regional tensions will subside.

Reporters are fond of noting that Abe Shinzo is the first Japanese prime minister to be born after 1945, and already he has shown better cooperation with China and South Korea than his predecessors. This may be a coincidence, but it could reasonably also be a source of hope.

Cross-posted on the Campus Progress Blog.

Dozens of reporters are working the North Korean nuclear test story. Dozens more, some on double duty, are covering Abe Shinzo’s tour through China and South Korea. I won’t try to duplicate or aggregate their work, but some of the key links appear at right in my Google Reader feed.

But there’s something going on behind the headlines that we shouldn’t overlook. Some commentators are hailing the current “fence-mending” tour and the region’s unanimity against North Korea’s actions as a sign of a new era in Japan’s relations with its neighbors. Maybe, but the jury is still out on the Abe administration.

When pressed by an opposition politician, Abe said he would not change the Murayama Statement of 1995, in which Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi expressed regret for Japan’s military actions during World War II on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the war’s end. “I have no plans of creating a new statement that would rewrite what the 1995 statement said,” Abe said. “That statement was approved by the then Cabinet so it still lives on with my Cabinet.”

But just because Abe won’t redress the Murayama Statement doesn’t mean he won’t step on diplomatic toes. What’s certain is that he is being careful not to cross China and South Korea early on. During Abe’s visit to China, Hu Jintao raised Yasukuni then said obliquely, “I hope you will work to remove political obstacles.” Far from resolutely conciliatory, this statement echoes statements by Hu and others in the Chinese government during the Koizumi era, when phrases like “responsible view of history” were code, meaning, “Don’t go to Yasukuni, Jun!”

But the visit did go smoothly, and the leaders’ agreement that a North Korean nuclear test would be “unacceptable” dominated the agenda. Since the nuclear test apparently occurred while Abe was in the air on the way to South Korea, the nuclear issue—and the corresponding unanimity—promises to dominate Abe’s time there. There is little potential for the emergence of Japan–Asia disputes on this trip, but that doesn’t mean it’s clear sailing forever.
Asahi Shimbun notes that Abe has a history of differing statements on the Murayama Statement and another political statement on the “comfort women” issue:

Abe previously had been similarly vague on his own views toward Murayama’s statement. In February, when Abe was still chief Cabinet secretary, he offered a different interpretation of Japan’s actions during World War II.

“There is also the issue of how to define a war of aggression,” Abe said at a Lower House Budget Committee session. “I think the situation is one in which no set definition has been decided on by scholars.”

Abe had taken a similar path regarding the [Chief Cabinet Secretary] Kono [Yohei] statement that acknowledged the involvement of the Imperial Japanese Army in the management of brothels for “comfort women.” The [1993] statement accompanied a report by the government on the “comfort women” issue.

In 1997, Abe joined a group of young Diet lawmakers that took issue with Japan’s history education.

At a session of the Lower House Audit Committee’s second sub-committee in May 1997, Abe criticized Kono’s statement as being based on false information.

On Thursday, Abe said his Cabinet will now inherit that statement.

Abe has already changed his historical interpretations to fit the political tides. It is therefore hard to predict what he will do in the future.

The White House came out in support of strong ties among East Asian states yesterday, but emphasized Japan–South Korea ties more than better relations between Japan and China.

I read the reference to the United States’ “two key allies in East Asia, Japan and the ROK” as a way of emphasizing the continued distance between the United States and China. The statement could easily have been worded to emphasize strong ties between all three without introducing this element.

The full statement:

President Bush is encouraged by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s planned visit to the People’s Republic of China on October 8 and to the Republic of Korea (ROK) on October 9. The United States places utmost importance on close cooperation between its two key allies in East Asia, Japan and the ROK. Stronger bilateral ties enable closer trilateral U.S.-Japan-ROK cooperation, which only strengthens our mutual partnerships based on common values of democracy and freedom. Cooperation between Japan and China is also critical to dealing with the common challenges we face in Asia. Strong relations among these key nations in Asia can enrich the vibrant social and economic exchanges already taking place, and contribute to the region’s security.

The President supports the efforts of Prime Minister Abe and looks forward to continuing the strong relationship between the United States and Japan for the cause of peace, prosperity, and freedom in Asia and the world.