Hillary Makes Her Rounds in Japan

The Japanese – well, the political elite and pundit class, anyway – breathed a collective sigh of relief when Hillary Clinton disembarked at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport Monday evening, on the first leg of her Asian tour, her first trip abroad as America’s new Secretary of State.

The political class had been obsessing about whether the new administration would “tilt” toward China. This is the case whenever there is a new administration in Washington, but it is particularly pronounced when a Democrat enters the White House. Japanese think that Democrats favor China.

This in part goes back to ten years ago in 1998 when President Bill Clinton spent nine days in China without stopping by Japan, an event that Japanese remember as if it were yesterday. It gave rise to the term “Japan passing.”

Foreign Minister Hirofume Nakasone said that Clinton’s two-day visit demonstrates “that the [new] U.S. administration prioritizes the Japan-U.S. alliance.” He called her decision to make Japan her first Asian stopping point in her first trip abroad “a significant move.”

In another significant move, Clinton extended an invitation to Prime Minister Taro Aso to visit Washington and meet with President Barack Obama on February 24. Aso will thus become the first foreign leader to visit Washington under the new regime.

The Japanese still remember and repeat the phrase made famous by former Ambassador Mike Mansfield, that the “U.S. Japan relationship is America’s most important bilateral relationship – bar none.” But Mansfield served 20 years ago before the rise of China changed the geopolitical landscape of Asia beyond recognition.

The Japanese follow America pronouncements the way that China watchers of old used to cull through documents looking for clues to Chinese thinking. Academics and other pundits have read every one of Clinton, Obama and John McCain’s campaign speeches and articles on world affairs, literally counting the total number of references to China or Japan in an attempt to determine which one they supposedly favored.

Japanese worry constantly that Washington will inevitably begin to put the priority on building its relationship China. This is especially true now that Beijing is considered crucial to resolving the global financial crisis, while Japan is looking less and less like a helpmate as its economy continues to shrink dramatically.

Even as Clinton disembarked, the government reported that Japan’s economy had contracted by an annualized 12 percent in the last quarter, the lowest since the “oil shock” crisis of 1974, and the third consecutive quarter in which the economy has shrunk.

Of course, there was more to Clinton’s Japan visit than just being there. On Tuesday she met with Ichiro Ozawa, the leader of the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DJP), which may replace the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in the election that must be held before September. That outcome seems more likely by the day.

(For Aso the hits just keep coming. His finance minister, Shoichi Nakagawa, resigned after embarrassing Japan by appearing to be drunk at a press conference following the G-7 finance ministers’ summit in Rome. Nakagawa, who admits to a drinking problem, claimed cold medication made him drowsy.

The political uproar in Japan almost pushed the Clinton visit off of the front pages. Opposition parties vied with one another to denounce the hapless Nakagawa. One opinion poll showed Aso’s approvals falling below 10 percent at 9.7 for the first time.)

Before the year is out Obama may find his administration becoming the first to deal with a government in Japan headed by a political party other than the Liberal Democratic Party, which has been a reliable partner for Washington for nearly 60 years. So it was natural that Clinton would want to sound out the man who may become Japan’s next prime minister.

Oddly, Ozawa played hard to get, agreeing to meet with Clinton only after the other leaders of the party insisted that he not let such a golden political opportunity slip by. He may have been worried about making commitments while still out of power; or he may have had other reasons. Ozawa is somewhat enigmatic.

With an eye to a possible change of government in Japan, Clinton and foreign minister Nakasone signed an agreement on the transfer of 8,000 U.S. Marines and their families on Okinawa to Guam, which commits Japan to paying $2.8 billion of the estimated $10 billion relocation costs.

Washington was no doubt eager to pin this down in writing while the LDP is still in office, since the opposition has criticized the Japanese taxpayer’s financial commitments for this project, and has said it wants to renegotiate the terms of the relocation if and when it comes into power.

In another symbolic move with important diplomatic overtones, Clinton met for 30 minutes with some of the families of Japanese who were kidnapped by North Korea and spirited to Pyongyang to train spies. Tokyo says that Pyongyang has never made a full and honest accounting for these unfortunates.

It is hard for outsiders to understand the importance that ordinary Japanese attach to this matter. Perhaps the closest comparison is the POW-MIA campaign in the U.S. during the Vietnam War. Prime Minister Aso himself wears a little blue ribbon in his lapel as a daily reminder, somewhat like Americans used to wear bracelets with the name of the missing. Clinton politely listened to their stories but made no commitments.

But this is a tricky issue for Washington, which puts a higher priority on disarming North Korea, as former president George W. Bush found out. He received Sakie Yokota, mother of Megumi, the most famous of the abductees, at the White House, which only raised expectations that Washington would make this issue a priority in negotiations with the North.

When Bush then turned around and took North Korea off of its list of “terror states” – the Japanese consider the kidnappings state terrorism - after giving Tokyo only a few hours official notice, many Japanese were stunned by this seeming abrupt decision and called it a betrayal.

Clinton has already telegraphed that she wants the Six-Party Talks to resume. In a speech to the Asia Society in New York, shortly before leaving, Clinton, said: “If North Korea genuinely is prepared to completely and verifiably eliminate their nuclear weapons program” the Obama administration will be willing to recognize the North, sign a peace agreement and extend aid.

So Clinton has to handle the abduction question delicately, showing that Japanese concerns are America’s concerns too, while at the same time keeping an eye on the main event, which is a complete nuclear disarmament of North Korea.