Minefield of regional rivalry awaits Japan’s new PM
By Jon Herskovitz
SEOUL: Step one for improving regional ties: Japan’s next prime minister avoids visiting a Tokyo war shrine seen as glorifying his country’s military march through Asia, making summits with South Korea and China possible again.
Step two is much harder: finding a way to steer Tokyo through the overlapping trade, security and political concerns of Asia’s three biggest economies while containing the rancour in Seoul and Beijing over the region’s troubled history.
Some analysts wonder if Shinzo Abe, a conservative who is set to become prime minister next week, is even ready for step one.
Outgoing Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi infuriated South Korea, China and other victims of World War Two by his annual visits to Yasukuni Shrine, where convicted class-A war criminals are honoured alongside millions of dead soldiers.
China and South Korea say the visits are deeply offensive as symbols of Japan’s failure to deal with its militaristic past and are the most important reason for chillier ties in recent years.
“The pre-eminent issue is the Yasukuni issue. It stimulates Chinese and South Korean resentment,” said Ahn Yinhay, an international relations professor at Korea University.
But the shrine in central Tokyo is also a convenient tool for hammering Japan when other regional problems mount.
The three economies are close in terms of trade, especially China and Japan. China supplies Japan with cheap goods and labour and Japanese components keep Chinese factories running.
However, they are also in competition for energy resources — with China and Japan vying for undersea gas deposits — and suspicious of an arms build-up by either side.
“In certain situations of big power rivalry and competition for scarce petroleum resources, such issues may become the tail that wags the dog of international relations,” said Mark Valencia, an expert in maritime policy.
While trade with China and South Korea has picked up under Koizumi, Japanese firms have grown twitchy at the sight of angry Koreans throwing rocks at Honda dealerships and Chinese calling for a boycott of Japanese goods in protests against Tokyo.
Both China and South Korea scuttled summits with Koizumi over his shrine visits, but Ralph Cossa, president of the Pacific Forum CSIS think-tank in Hawaii, believes Beijing may take the lead over South Korea in defrosting ties with Japan.
“The Chinese have been sending very strong signals for months now that they want to start anew and get things back on track,” Cossa said.
China and Japan have fewer areas of overlap in trade than South Korea and Japan, which compete in the shipbuilding, automobiles, semiconductors and consumer electronics sectors.
South Korea has also dropped heavy hints it is ready for summits with Japan’s new prime minister.
But with an unpopular president who has a history of slamming Japan and a presidential election soon to gear up in a country where playing nice with Tokyo wins few votes, it may be more difficult for Seoul to warm to Abe.
“The Koreans are shameless in playing the anti-Japan card whenever their own domestic politics permits or demands it,” Cossa said.
When the three countries are not infuriating each other, neighbouring North Korea is happy to drive wedges between them.
Tokyo, Seoul and Beijing are united in diplomatic efforts to have Pyongyang scrap its nuclear weapons programme, but they come at the problem with different policy priorities.
China is North Korea’s biggest benefactor and its last remaining major ally. South Korea favours engagement with its neighbour and fears instability in the North, especially with the massive military arsenal Pyongyang points at it.
Abe supports the hard line Tokyo has taken toward Pyongyang. He caused a furore in Seoul by saying after North Korea test-fired missiles in July that Japan may consider revising its pacifist constitution in order to make pre-emptive strikes.
But his biggest test will still be the Yasukuni shrine.
Abe has defended Koizumi’s visits to Yasukuni and paid his respects there in the past, but has declined to say whether he would do so once he is prime minister.—Reuters
