Trump’s Choice for Japan

Why Donald Trump Wants Takaichi to Win

by Daniel Sneider, lecturer in East Asian studies at Stanford University, non-resident distinguished fellow at the Korea Economic Institute of America, and APP Member. 

First Published January 26, 2026 on Toyo Keizai Online.

Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae wants the coming election to be a referendum on her personal leadership. In that contest, she has already won one vote – from U.S. President Donald Trump.

Is a clear victory for Takaichi the best outcome for the U.S? “Absolutely,” Kenneth Weinstein, an advisor to Trump, declared without hesitation.

Weinstein is the Japan Chair at the conservative Hudson Institute think tank and was the nominee to be Ambassador to Japan during the first Trump administration. In an interview with Toyo Keizai Online, he explained why a Takaichi triumph fits the Trump administration agenda.

“She is clearly focused on defense, national security, upgrading Japan’s security posture, upgrading Japan’s security capabilities, someone willing to work closely with the United States, and our allies, and willing to deepen the ties in the Indo Pacific that we in the United States have been less effective in doing,” Weinstein explained.

Clearly, Takaichi is seen as a loyal follower of Trump, one unlikely to challenge the U.S. as Europe and Canada are now doing in response to the military operations in Venezuela and the threat to seize Greenland.

“I don’t think the Takaichi administration is going to say a word about Greenland,” the distinguished American Japan scholar Gerald Curtis told Toyo Keizai. “Of all the allies, Japan is the one with which Trump has the least problems.”

American preference for Japan to be governed by the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is hardly unusual. But Takaichi is viewed as a significant improvement over the previous government of Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru who sought to create some distance from the U.S.

Instead, the Trump administration expects a victorious Takaichi government to rapidly increase defense spending and take on the responsibility for regional security in the Asia Pacific.

“We also need someone who understands the immense burdens that the Japanese people are going to have to bear in terms of their own national security,” Weinstein said. “And she is as good as it gets.”

The China question between Trump and Takaichi

For China hawks, like Weinstein, a strong Takaichi government is useful in bolstering those who are worried about an American retreat from Asia and a grand bargain with China’s Xi Jinping when the President goes to China in April.

“We need a strong leader and strong partner to keep us focused, on China, on the Taiwan challenge, on the Scarborough Shoal challenge,” the Hudson Japan chair who formally was the CEO of the think tank, told us.

Weinstein and other Japan hands are carefully critical of Trump’s failure to come to the open support of Takaichi after her comments on Taiwan and the massive pressure campaign mounted by China against her government.

But he and others dismiss fears that Trump is heading toward some kind of G-2 grand pact with China. They point to the attack on Venezuela and the pressure on Iran as moves that effectively strike at China which is dependent on those countries for oil.

They see the approval of arms sales to Taiwan and the recent trade agreement with Taiwan as further evidence that Trump is not planning on abandoning Taiwan in the pursuit of a deal with Xi.

Trump is seeking a bargain with Xi but not a grand alliance, Weinstein contends. His hesitation in backing Takaichi against China was tactical. “The president doesn’t want to have an open confrontation with China on the eve of his summit,” he said.

“Trump wants to strike a big deal with China,” Patrick Cronin, Asia-Pacific security chair at Hudson, told this writer. “But this is not some game-changing G2 moment.” He compared it to the talks between Xi and former President Joe Biden in seeking strategic stability, one that avoids the difficult issue of Taiwan.

Takaichi’s “big mistake” was to undermine Trump’s desire to make this deal with Xi, observed Curtis, an emeritus professor at Columbia University. “I wasn’t surprised that he was upset with Takaichi and called her and told her to get out of this mess.”

If Takaichi manages a decisive victory in the February election – and there is no consensus on this among American Japan hands – she will then head to Washington for a meeting ahead of Trump’s April trip to Beijing.

But that meeting may be even more challenging for a stronger Takaichi than if she still leads a weak coalition government.

Curtis predicts that Takaichi will not focus on China in Washington. “She knows that is not a winning issue for her in dealing with Trump,” he told Toyo Keizai. “Trump is interested in money and he wants to have his 550 billion bucks. It is his money and she better get it to him.”

Trump of course is unpredictable but within the Trump administration bureaucracy, to the extent it plays a role in forming policy, the focus is on strengthening security ties. That is particularly true for those who want to push a harder line toward China and want Japan to vastly increase its defense spending.

“Both State and Defense are very interested in making effective cooperative deals with Japan and they think Prime Minister Takaichi is clearly the best person for that now,” said Cronin, a prominent security expert.

“From the Pentagon’s perspective, you are either helping deterrence against a China contingency or you are not,” he explained. “You have to look tough if you want to keep the peace. She has bought into that security paradigm.”

How the Americans see the election prospects

Among the Trump advisors, there is praise for Takaichi’s decision to call a snap election and, at this early stage, an expectation of a clear, even dramatic victory.

“It seems like an incredibly smart move politically,” Weinstein told TOE. “If the polling numbers stay where they are for her, she should have a resounding victory that will really change the shape of the Diet moving forward. It looks like a strong return of the LDP after the weaknesses shown in the Upper House elections not too many months ago.”

Even some non-Trump analysts share this assessment of the decision to go down this somewhat uncertain road.

“No election is free of risk but for Takaichi the risk of losing seats in an election held now would not be as nearly as great as the risk she would be facing by waiting too long,” argued Curtis, probably the most well respected observer of Japanese politics in the U.S. “Better to strike now with her public support at more than 70 percent, the political opposition in disarray, and public opinion polls and the LDP’s own election district by district analysis indicating the strong possibility that the LDP would win the 235 seats needed for a majority and perhaps garner as many as 260 seats.”

Both men attribute the prospects for victory to Takaichi’s personal appeal, not to the popularity of the LDP or her policy proposals for taxes or other domestic issues, even including her embrace of Trump-like anti-immigrant rhetoric.

Takaichi “is running a presidential style race,” said Weinstein. “I don’t see her running as the LDP,” he added. Others have compared her not to Abe Shinzo, her mentor, but to Koizumi Junichiro who won election a quarter century ago by running in some ways against the LDP as well as the opposition.

Takaichi’s popularity, in their view, seems to be due primarily to the uniqueness of her being the country’s first female prime minister, her image as a decisive and confident leader, and her ability to benefit from a rightwing shift among the Japanese public and among younger people in particular. Her ability to manage ties with Trump, and with South Korea’s Lee Jae Myung, as well as stand up to China has worked to bolster this image of a strong leader.

This assessment is not universally shared among American Japan experts who are also intrigued by the formation of a new centrist alliance of the Constitutional Democratic Party and the Komei party, whose loyal voters provided a key margin of victory for decades in their now broken alliance with the LDP.

Cronin, who is also based on the pro-Trump Hudson Institute, is more skeptical about a clear Takaichi victory next month.

“I think the assumption a couple of weeks ago was that she could ride her huge popularity and enlarge her majority in the Diet,” he told TOE. “But the politics now look challenging for her. She is facing a united opposition, she lacks a unified coalition, and she is facing a twin set of pressures from China and from the US, in terms of economics. She can still win a majority, but I wouldn’t bet on it.”

Whether Trump is even thinking much about this situation, given the focus on Greenland and his domestic battles, is doubtful. Nor is there much thought about the possibility that a rightwing nationalist government in Japan may head off in a very independent direction. But for now, the fact that Takaichi is Trump’s choice for Japan is undeniable.

Abe's Politics Disguised as Foreign Policy

POLITICS DISGUISED AS FOREIGN POLICY: GETTING READY FOR ELECTIONS IN JAPAN 

BY DAN SNEIDER, Stanford University, APP Member

TOKYO REPORT, First appeared in The Nelson Report, June 7,2019

Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo has embarked upon a flurry of diplomacy that has much more to do with politics back home than with foreign policy abroad.

Abe's diplomatic dance began with the hosting of Donald Trump for his Imperial audience. It continues with a visit to Iran on June 12-14, taking a stab at heading off the threat of war in the Persian Gulf, and it culminates at the end of the month with the hosting of the Group of 20 summit in Osaka. In between the Prime Minister has opened the door wide to a meeting with North Korea's Kim Jong Un, and tried to keep the door open as well to a long-sought agreement with Vladimir Putin to end Japan's postwar territorial dispute with Russia.

All of this can be read as yet more signs of a Japan ready, and eager, to play a global leadership role. For Abe, however, it is more important that this be seen as evidence of his personal prowess as a world figure, one whose continued presence in office is now intrinsically linked to Japan's status in the world. Whether this diplomacy yields real results, whether it is avoiding a damaging breakdown in the world trading system or a dangerous war in the Middle East, remains to be seen.

Abe, however, is thinking only weeks ahead. The primary audience for these displays of diplomacy are the Japanese voters who will go to the polls in late July to elect half of the House of Councilors, the upper house of Japan's parliament. Upper house elections tend to favor the opposition--the turnout is lower and the smaller number of single member districts makes it easier for the fractured opposition to agree, as they have done already, to join hands and run only a single candidate. Political experts project a likely decline in ruling party seats, though not enough to threaten their majority.

The ruling coalition of the conservative Liberal Democratic Party and the Buddhist Komei party will continue to dominate Japanese politics. But there is a personal peril in this election for Abe.

If the LDP does poorly, Abe's hopes of getting to a two-thirds majority sufficient to move ahead with long-held dreams of seeking a revision of Japan's pacifist constitution would be effectively dead. Even more seriously, Abe would face a resurgence of opposition from within the LDP where rivals are ready to jump at any sign of weakness. As we saw last year, when a series of corruption scandals hit, there are many would-be prime ministers who are frustrated by Abe's extended rule, now scheduled to go until at least 2021. He is already the third longest serving premier in Japanese history.

These political risks are paired with a growing economic danger - that the Japanese economy is heading into a serious slowdown, if not a recession, fueled by the already evident drop in Japan's global trade. An unresolved trade war between the US and China, and a possible breakdown in trade talks with the US that could lead to American tariffs on Japanese auto exports, could deepen this downturn. Looming in the fall is the planned increase in Japan's national sale tax, from 8 to 10 percent, considered essential for fiscal stability but now another possible trigger for recession.

For these reasons, Abe has been playing around with the option of calling a simultaneous snap election for the House of Representatives, the more powerful lower house of the parliament. A "double election" would bring out a greater turnout, make it far more difficult for the opposition to unite, and favor the better organized and better funded LDP. And this may be the last chance to get out ahead of an economic slowdown.

Double elections are relatively rare in Japanese political history. This has only happened twice, most recently over 30 years ago in 1986. Abe has been searching for a credible excuse to dissolve the Diet for Japanese voters. He was hoping for a diplomatic breakthrough with Russia, or with North Korea, to put before Japanese voters. But without a diplomatic excuse, the possible second postponement of the tax hike is the only ostensible reason to call a double election.

So far, the conventional wisdom among Japanese political reporters has been that a double election is likely, if not inevitable. But most seasoned American observers of Japanese politics, though not all, are skeptical that Abe would risk his leadership of Japan. That may reflect the worries American policy makers have about a Japan without the steady hand of Abe at the helm.

This writer sought out the views of some of the best American experts on Japanese politics about the prospects for both a tax hike and double elections. Among the experts I consulted were the doyen of Japanese politics experts, Columbia University's Gerald Curtis, who is renowned for his close ties to senior politicians; Temple University's Japan-based scholar Jeff Kingston; Tokyo University's Gregory Noble; and Teneo Consulting's Tobias Harris.

Among these American Japan watchers, Temple's Kingston, who writes frequently about Japanese politics, came closest to the views of Japanese political reporters.

"I think chances are better than 50/50 for a double election because the economic news is likely to worsen," Kingston told me. "Abe can come off the Trump summit and G20 striding tall on the international stage while the opposition looks like squabbling Lilliputians, unable to provide any real check. There is a risk of losing a two-thirds majority that would endanger the Holy Grail of constitutional revision, but that risk looks small. None of the opposition parties polls out of single digits. Abe's approval ratings are high, the economy is stagnant but Abe has shrugged off worse news and scandals to win."

A mandate to postpone the tax increase, pending economic results this summer, would be popular, Kingston and others believe. But Columbia's Curtis, who remains the leading American scholar of Japanese politics, took a very different view.

"I see no chance that the consumption tax will be postponed," Curtis told me in a June 4 email. "Abe has said, as recently as yesterday, that the tax increase will go ahead unless there is a Lehman shock level economic crisis. Whether there is a double election is a separate issue. Postponing the consumption tax wouldn't necessarily help the LDP in the election. The opposition would make the plausible argument that it was their pressure that forced Abe to postpone it."

While Abe can find an excuse to call an election, Curtis says, "I think the chances are small that he will do so. The LDP expects to lose seats, though not its majority with the Komeito, in the Upper House. It has to worry that dissolving the lower house and calling a double election will backfire and it will lose a lot of seats in the lower house as well. So, my expectation is no delay in the consumption tax increase and no double election, though I feel more confident about the former than the latter."

Tokyo University's Greg Noble is equally skeptical on both the tax hike and double election front, but he leaves the door open for Abe to do something unexpected - "Abe is not constrained by norms," Noble told me. But the Todai scholar leans against it.

"The smart money--and history--says that all this talk is just idle speculation designed to sell newspapers or confuse other parties," says Noble. "Same-day/dual elections have occurred only twice (1980 and 1986), most recently over 30 years ago, and even then, under very different political circumstances. The current term has a lot of time left, and there's no good reason to call an election. Nor does the public support dissolution now. Moreover, the ruling parties could lose their super-majority and ability to propose constitutional revision. Elections are always risky, and most Diet members would rather stay in office as long as possible. As for using yet another delay in raising the VAT as an excuse, count me among the skeptics."

When it comes to the economy, the Tokyo University scholar notes that there are traditional counter measures available to dampen the effect of the increase on consumption. The economy is slowing but still growing and there may not be any better moment to deal with Japan's fiscal problems. "This is not a particularly bad time to raise taxes," he told me. "Japan's public finances really are in terrible shape, and the credibility of its policymaking would take a severe hit if Abe whiffed yet again."

All that said, American political analysts see the political logic of Abe taking a chance on calling a double election. The main driver for this is to put the opposition on its heels. There is a very fragile agreement among the main progressive opposition parties--the Constitutional Democratic Party, the Democratic Party for the People, the Japanese Communist Party, the Liberal Party and the Social Democratic Party--to field a unified list of candidates in almost all of the 32 single seat constituencies for the House of Councilors. While that move poses a challenge for the LDP, "it does strengthen Abe's reasons for calling a double election," Teneo's Harris told me.

Opposition cooperation in a much larger field for the lower house - there are 289 single seat constituencies - is unlikely. "Having to compete in lower house races while cooperating in upper house races could stretch opposition parties' capacities to the breaking point," Harris believes. "That said, given that there hasn't been a double election in 33 years, it's hard to be certain exactly how the public will respond to one. But I suspect that if Abe's willing to do it, it's less of a roll of the dice than it might seem."

Bottom line is the situation is getting less predictable, even for Japanese political reporters. A senior political reporter who was sure a double election would be held a few weeks ago, now tells me privately that he sees more of his colleagues betting against it. He points out that the Komeito, whose voter base is essential for the LDP, is against holding a double election at this point.

Still, as this writer has learned the hard way, it is always a bad idea to bet against Abe finding a way to win. As Noble points out: "The opposition failed to nail Abe over the various scandals of last year, and right now Abe is back in the saddle, with a support rating of close to 50%, remarkably good for someone who has been in office six and half years...the temptation to crush the opposition yet again will be strong."

As American policymakers get ready for the G20 meeting in Osaka, or for trade talks with Japan, it would be good to have this in their minds. All politics are local everywhere, and all foreign policy is defined by politics, even in authoritarian regimes but especially in ones where voters still get to have a say in their government.

Japanese state history dissemination

Autobiography of Massachusetts
native who survived
the Bataan Death March

On November 30, the Abe Administration through its Foreign Ministry's think tank, the Japan International Institute for International Studies (JIIA), will sponsor a conference in Washington, DC at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (CEIP), entitled, POST-WAR U.S.-JAPAN RECONCILIATION: STRATEGIC BENEFITS OF HEALING.

Its purpose, as the Sankei Shimbun article below explains, is to present the current Japanese government's views of history.

This means it is an effort to sanitize the Japanese Administration's denier history narrative and to discredit Korea and China's historical views of WWII.  The United States will be presented as the "good" reconcilier. However, people who actually fought for historical justice for the American POWs, civilian internees, and comfort women are not included in the conference. These scholars and activists are likely to observe that the U.S. was a reconciler through neglect and its absence in reconciliation programs.

Speakers complicit in this effort are: Representative Niki Tsongas (D-MA); Michael H. Armacost, Shorenstein APARC fellow, Stanford University; Gerald L. Curtis, Burgess professor emeritus of political science at Columbia University; Thomas Berger, professor of international relations at the Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University; Rohan Mukherjee, assistant professor of political science at Yale-NUS College in Singapore; Keiko Iizuka, editorialist and senior political writer for the Yomiuri Shimbun; Koichi Ai, acting director general at the Japan Institute of International Affairs; Michael R. Auslin, Research Fellow, Hoover Institution; Jennifer Lind, Associate Professor, Department of Government, Dartmouth College; Toshihiro Nakayama, Professor, Faculty of Policy Management, Keio University; Douglas H. Paal, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; James L. Schoff, senior fellow in the Carnegie Asia Program.

Japan International Institute for International Studies Begins to Spread Japan's Viewpoints on History by Initiating its First International Symposium on History and Reconciliation

Sankei Shimbun, November 19, 2017 [Provisional Translation by APP Interns]

The Japan International Institute for International Studies (President and Director General Yoshiji Nogami, Former Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs) will hold a number of symposia overseas on the theme of "history and reconciliation.” It is the first time for JIIA, established in 1959, to hold a symposium overseas on this theme. This is an effort to disseminate overseas the arguments of the Japan side based on objective historical research on such issues as territory and comfort women that Japan has [differences] with neighboring countries.

The symposia will be held in Washington DC on November 30th; in Paris next January; and in New Delhi in February. Researchers from Japan and overseas will participate and it is expected that the latest research in Japan and the opinions of researchers from third-party countries will be presented.

In addition to underscoring the differences between regions that experienced the last world war [大戰] and other events where reconciliation has progressed and those regions where it has not, the symposia are expected also to focus discussion on nationalism in each country.

[Note: The Sankei’s text is ambiguous and written badly. The Sankei writer is hinting above that one should “look at Taiwan and the Philippines, etc., who are very cooperative with Japan despite their war experience, and compare them with the Koreans and Chinese who continue to condemn Japan.”]

The Institute held a symposium in Tokyo this October [the 12th, (Japanese only)] that invited history researchers and others from South Korea, India and the U.S. entitled “History and Reconciliation - Thinking from International Comparison.” One participant, Professor Park Yu-ha of Sejong University [not a historian], the author of the book The Empire's Comfort Women, who was charged [and convicted] of defamation against the several former Comfort Women, said, “The background of the comfort women issue as a major problem between Japan and South Korea can be traced to the fact that the ideological conflict between the left and right in South Korea is closely linked to their views of Korean history as related to Japan.” [i.e., Park is saying that the Korean Left is anti-Japanese and the Right is pro-Japanese]

With an unfair “history war” developing abroad, a JIIA official noted, “We hope that these symposia can spread the data [correct historical evidence] that Japan has accumulated so far in order to appeal to the hearts of people in the West and elsewhere.

###

Background

>Japan Institute of International Affairs caves to right-wing pressure. 2006/2007

The Struggle for the Japanese Soul: Komori Yoshihisa, Sankei Shimbun, and the JIIA controversy By David McNeill, Japan Focus, September 4, 2006.

Softly, Softly: Did the Japan Institute of International Affairs buckle under right-wing pressure? No, says Ambassador Satoh Yukio. Yes, say his critics by David McNeill; Fred Varcoe interviews Amb. Satoh Yukio, Japan Focus, July 3, 2007.

>SYMPOSIUM "HISTORY AND RECONCILIATION－AN INTERNATIONAL COMPARATIVE STUDY"－October 12, 2017 JIIA Symposium in Tokyo

Part I: "Case Studies on Reconciliation" [Video]

Mr. Brahma Chellaney, Professor, Strategic Studies, Center for Policy Research in New Delhi

Ms. Lily Gardner Feldman, Senior Fellow, American Institute for Contemporary German Studies(AICGS), Johns Hopkins

Mr. Fumiaki Kubo, Senior Fellow, American Government and History, Graduate Schools for Law and Politics, University of Tokyo

Mr. Nobukatsu Kanehara, Deputy Secretary General of National Security Secretariat and Assistant Chief Cabinet Secretary, Prime Minister’s Office of Japan

Part II: "What Promotes and Prevents Reconciliation?"

Ms. Yinan He, Associate professor, Department of International Relations, Lehigh University

Ms. Ji Young Kim, Associate Professor, Department of Area Studies, University of Tokyo

Mr. Kazuya Sakamoto, Professor, Department of Law and Political Science, Graduate School of Law and Politics, Osaka University

Mr. Thongchai Winichakul, Emeritus Professor of Southeast Asian History, University of Wisconsin–Madison

Part III: "Reconciliation and Nationalism"

Mr. Yūichi Hosoya, Senior Fellow, Tokyo Foundation, Professor, Faculty of Law, Keio University.

Mr. Lung-chih Chang, Associate Research Fellow and Deputy Director, Institute of Taiwan History

Mr. Daqing Yang, Associate Professor of History and International Affairs, GWU

Ms. Yu-ha Park, Professor, College of Liberal Arts, Sejong University

Mr. Shin Kawashima, Professor, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo

Abe treads a fine line on WWII

By Professor Gerry Curtis, Columbia University and APP member

First appeared in EastAsiaForum, 20 August 2015

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s statement commemorating the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II probably satisfies no constituency — not his right wing base, not the political opposition, not the Chinese nor the Koreans. If the US government has any qualms about it, it is keeping them to itself.

But Abe did invoke the four key words of the Murayama Statement— aggression, colonialism, apology, remorse — even if not in first person declaratory sentences. And he did not say anything so outrageous as to make an angry response unavoidable. In this sense Abe dodged a bullet.

If China and South Korea want to improve relations with Japan, the statement gives them enough to work with — it shows appreciation to the Chinese for the magnanimity they showed to Japanese civilians caught up in the war in China, and sympathy for the Chinese victims of the war. It refers to the ill treatment of women — in lukewarm language to be sure, but better than saying nothing. The influence of the prime minister’s advisory panel led by Professor Shinichi Kitaoka is evident throughout the statement, including its admission that Japan fought a wrong war and that political parties were too weak to control the military.

Abe did try to make the case that Japan went down the road it did because the Great Depression and the trade policies of the western countries were strangling the Japanese economy. This implies that in the end going to war was a defensive action.

But at least he didn’t say what the right wing believes and what was best stated by the previous emperor Hirohito in his radio address accepting the surrender terms of the Potsdam Declaration: ‘we cannot [help] but express the deepest sense of regret to our allied nations of East Asia, who have consistently cooperated with the Empire toward the emancipation of East Asia’.

Abe referenced the Russo–Japanese war as an inspiration for anti-colonial movements from Asia to Africa, which is entirely true. But he did not pay homage to the right-wing view that Japan’s Greater East Asia War had anything to do with liberating Asian countries from western colonialism. Unfortunately and worryingly, in contrast to the expressions of compassion for Chinese victims of the war, he had virtually nothing to say about the Korean victims of harsh Japanese colonial rule.

It is disappointing that he did not say something about what needs to be done now so that future generations are not ‘predestined’ to engage in unending apologies as he put it. The only way to end demands for apology is for the current generation to apologise in so convincing a manner that attacks on Japan’s lack of repentance lose all credibility.

This is not likely to happen as right-wing self-defined defenders of Japanese national pride can be counted on to find a way to provide ammunition for Chinese and Koreans to continue to demand apologies. He also could have used a better writer or a more skilled editor. He could have said what he said in half as many words and have had more of an impact that way. The statement is painfully repetitive and tedious.

The statement in a certain sense reflects the strength of Japan’s democracy. Abe would not have issued this statement if he were unafraid of how the public and the media would react had he given one more in line with the views of the Liberal Democratic Party’s right wing — views he himself has expressed repeatedly in the past. This statement probably won’t help his poll numbers but it is unlikely to hurt them either. It is a wash. And that is probably true for its impact on relations with China and South Korea as well.

Japan Urged To Take Pride In Admitting To Troubled Past

On January 12th, Kyodo News interviewed APP member Columbia University Professor Gerald Curtis. 

He described Japan's ties with China and South Korea as "worrisome," with the "history issue" as an underlying factor. His advice was for Japan to "take pride in admitting what you're not proud of," just as other countries have reevaluated their own past like the United Sates where schools are facing uncomfortable truths about issues such as the treatment of native Americans, the segregation era and the Vietnam War.

Selections from the interview follow:

"This history issue, you can't just say it doesn't matter or there's nothing Japan can do, Japan has to do something."

Nearly 70 years after World War II ended, this question, he said, is "more controversial now than it ever has been in the post-war period" and there is now "all this anger directed against Japan."

This is despite Japan being a peaceful country and providing sizable economic assistance to China and South Korea in the postwar period.

"I think a lot of Japanese are really perplexed by this development."

The Chinese and South Korean governments downplayed Japan's wartime role in the past, according Curtis, because they needed a good relationship with Japan to rebuild their struggling countries.

"There was a kind of collusion between the Japanese, the Koreans and the Chinese not to make a big issue of Japan's war crimes and so on, because they had other objectives that the Japanese could help achieve in terms of economic growth."

However, as the Chinese and South Korean economies took off, the people there began to revisit Japan's role as a colonizer while Japanese schools continued to leave out "unpleasant and awful" parts of its history.

"There is a loss of memory in Japan and an intensified memory in China and Korea," Curtis said, adding that Japanese youth now are unaware of the historical context surrounding Yasukuni, where 14 Class A war criminals are honored along with the war dead. The shrine is seen as having been an instrument of state Shinto worship and a symbol of Japan's militarism.

"The Koreans and the Chinese don't let this history go; they think it somehow benefits them to bash Japan and it's wrong," he said, adding, "They're helping to make the nationalist sentiment stronger in Japan."

Although Seoul and Beijing have repeatedly called on Tokyo to apologize for its colonial past, Curtis said that the 1995 statement on Japan's wartime conduct by then Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama was sufficient. "It's not a question of apology, Japan has apologized many times and the Murayama apology is about as strong and as full an apology as you can ask for," he said.

The current government needs to proactively reach out to its neighbors to assure them that it will not repeat its militarist past, the scholar suggested.

"Abe has to come out and say...there is no room in Japan today for the values that led Japan to do what it did before the war," Curtis said, elaborating that they are the values that led Japan "to become a colonial power, to use force against neighboring countries, that accepted the recruitment of young girls to provide sex for Japanese soldiers."

Abe needs to make such a statement "whether or not he believes it."

"Without that kind of reflection on its past, I don't see how you can really improve the situation."

On China, Curtis said, "the issue is a real, palpable sense of concern, if not fear, on the Japanese part" about the implications for its security of Beijing's growing power as it challenges the American position in Asia, where the United States has exerted hegemony.

In this context, Curtis said the United States, bound by a security alliance accord with Japan, is concerned about being entangled in a conflict it does not want to be part of, such as a military clash over the Senkakus, a group of islands at the heart of a row between Tokyo and Beijing.

The United States would not want to get involved in a war with China for Japan over those "barren rocks in the East China Sea," given the war fatigue Americans are experiencing after Afghanistan and Iraq, according to Curtis.

For the U.S. administration, "the question is how do you demonstrate to the Japanese that our commitment to Japanese security is as strong as ever, but not give Mr. Abe a free hand to create problems that will then drag us into a situation we don't want to be a part of?" he said.

Curtis questioned the growing view in Japan that things would be different if the Republicans were in power instead of Democrat President Barack Obama, perceived as weak and indecisive. "This is an illusion," Curtis said. "This is not about Obama. This is about a changed world and a changed U.S. in the world."

While the Japanese media "exaggerates" the extent of anti-Japanese sentiment among the public in China and South Korea, there is room for ameliorating relations in East Asia, the professor suggested, citing the South Korean business community, which he sees as not necessarily anti-Japanese, and young Chinese people.

Japan's Cautious Hawks

In Japan's Cautious Hawks: Why Tokyo Is Unlikely to Pursue an Aggressive Foreign Policy published in the March/April 2013 issue of Foreign Affairs, APP member and Columbia University Professor Gerald L. Curtis argues that even the ideological Prime Minister Abe will be pragmatic in his relations with China and the United States. He cannot afford, materially or politically, to do otherwise.

Here is the conclusion to his excellent piece:

YOU CAN'T ALWAYS GET WHAT YOU WANT

In assessing the current Japanese political scene and the possible strategic course that Tokyo might chart, it is important to remember that a right-of-center government and a polarized debate over foreign policy are nothing new in Japan's postwar history. Abe is one of the most ideological of Japan's postwar prime ministers, but so was his grandfather Nobusuke Kishi, who was a cabinet minister during World War II and prime minister from 1957 to 1960. Kishi wanted to revise the U.S.-imposed constitution and to undo other postwar reforms; these are his grandson's goals more than half a century later.

But Kishi was also a pragmatist who distinguished between the desirable and the possible. As prime minister, he focused his energies on the latter, negotiating with the Eisenhower administration a revised security treaty that remains the framework for the U.S.-Japanese alliance today. For Abe as well, ideology will not likely trump pragmatism. The key question to ask about Japan's future is not what kind of world Abe would like to see but what he and other Japanese leaders believe the country must do to survive in the world as they find it.

If Tokyo's foreign policy moves off in a new direction, what will drive it there is not an irrepressible Japanese desire to be a great power. Although some Japanese politicians voice that aspiration, they will gain the support of the public only if it becomes convinced that changes in the international situation require Japan to take a dramatically different approach from the one that has brought it peace and prosperity for decades.

The Japanese public remains risk averse; nearly 70 years after World War II, it has not forgotten the lessons of that era any more than other Asian nations have. And despite changes in the region, the realities of Japanese politics and of American power still favor a continuation of Japan's current strategy: maintaining the alliance with the United States; gradually expanding Japan's contribution to regional security; developing security dialogues with Australia, India, South Korea, and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations; and deepening its engagement with China. China's growing economic clout and military power do present new challenges for Tokyo and Washington, but these challenges can be met without dividing Asia into two hostile camps. If Japanese policy changes in anything more than an incremental manner, it will be due to the failure of Washington to evolve a policy that sustains U.S. leadership while accommodating Chinese power.

Will the Abe government chart a new course for Japanese foreign policy? Only if the public comes to believe that the threat from China is so grave and the credibility of the United States' commitment to contain it is so weakened that Japan's survival is at stake. But if rational thinking prevails in Beijing, Tokyo, and Washington, the approach that has made Japan the linchpin of the United States' security strategy in Asia, stabilized the region, and brought Japan peace and prosperity is likely to persist.