TOKYO: Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has a penchant for bold and risky moves, but experts question whether he’s willing to make a grand gesture that might help repair tangled ties with China.
Tensions between the Asian rivals over a range of topics, especially what many Chinese see as Japan’s failure to acknowledge wartime atrocities, erupted in China at the weekend as thousands of people took part in protests that turned violent.
The deep freeze in bilateral ties comes a time when rivalry and mistrust are festering, making it hard to resolve despite equally tightening economic ties.
“China is perceived as a threat and as someone you should not give in to, whether it’s over intellectual property rights, oil issues or disagreements over the facts of history,” said Jesper Koll, chief economist at Merrill Lynch in Tokyo.
Among the many matters tangling ties are competition for energy resources, mutual concern about military strategies, and rivalry over leadership in Asian regional economic integration.
Many analysts, though, agree Koizumi himself bears a large burden for the chill in relations that began after he took office in 2001 and visited Tokyo’s Yasukuni Shrine, where convicted war criminals are honoured along with Japan’s war dead.
Some say Koizumi was eyeing votes from a powerful veterans’ group, others that he was acting in accord with his conscience.
Either way, diplomacy seems to have been of scant concern.
“It’s not a foreign policy issue for him.
That’s one reason he is so persistent,” said Yoshihide Soeya, a professor of international relations at Keio University in Tokyo.
China’s objection to the Yasukuni visits has prevented Koizumi from making an official trip to Beijing since October 2001 and no Chinese president has come to Japan since 1998.
BOXED IN?: A grand gesture now might be perceived as backing down and could lose Koizumi support among the increasingly vocal right wing of his conservative party as well as those ordinary Japanese who resent what they see as Chinese carping.
“I think Yasukuni has got him into a lot of trouble and he can’t get out of it,” said Gerald Curtis, a political science professor at New York’s Columbia University.
Still, Koizumi has stunned before with high-risk diplomatic moves, as when he travelled twice to North Korea in search of a breakthrough in ties.
Koizumi’s term as ruling party chief ends in September 2006 and he is thought to be pondering his legacy.
With no national election mandated until 2007, he could have scope to act.
“He has a free hand, he can do as he pleases,” said Gebhard Hielscher, a German journalist with almost 40 years in Japan.
Japanese leaders have apologised for the suffering caused by Tokyo’s past military, but many in countries that were victims feel the contrition is insincere — partly because of contradictory comments by conservative politicians.
Perhaps Japan’s most oft-mentioned apology was a 1995 statement by then-Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama on the 50th anniversary of Japan’s defeat in World War Two.
