Japan's prime minister Yoshihiko Noda inspects a guard of honour during his ceremonial reception at the presidential palace in New Delhi December 28, 2011 (B Mathur/Courtesy Reuters).

Unlike many of us, Japan’s prime minister did not sit back and rest at year’s end. Rather, Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda took to the road to visit two of Asia’s ascending powers. He spent Christmas in Beijing, after a planned visit for earlier in December was unexpectedly postponed by China’s leaders. Yet it was his trip to New Delhi on December 27–28 that energized Tokyo’s diplomatic agenda.

Noda’s willingness to rearrange his schedule to accommodate China’s desire to change the summit dates reflects an awareness of the delicacy of the moment for Beijing. The original date of the summit coincided with the deeply painful anniversary of World War II atrocities, the day Japanese Imperial Army troops captured the city of Nanjing. Postponing a planned summit meeting may be unprecedented, yet it leaves us wondering why Beijing’s leaders did not appreciate the domestic impact of hosting Japan’s leader when they picked the date. That they saw fit to ask Tokyo to reschedule reveals perhaps a bit more confusion in Beijing than is usual. But it also reveals the efforts Japanese and Chinese governments together are making to get this important bilateral relationship back on a sound footing. Read more »

Japan's next prime minister Yoshihiko Noda attends the lower house of parliament in Tokyo August 30, 2011 (Toru Hanai/Courtesy Reuters).

Yesterday, my colleague Elizabeth Economy raised an important question in her blog post about Japan’s new prime minister Yoshihiko Noda. I had characterized him as a moderate, yet for many in China and Korea he is a right-wing nationalist. So which is it?

Noda is both a moderate, and a nationalist. At home, in the context of Japan’s leadership politics, he is a self-described “middle of the road” politician. In an essay in Bungei Shunju this month, Noda outlines his governance vision and firmly places himself in the moderate middle of the policy agenda—a comfortable place for those wishing to bring divisive factions together.

As I wrote in ForeignAffairs.com, Noda’s domestic agenda is full. Yet, diplomatic challenges abound—and particularly this coming year in Northeast Asia—as the politics of transition make every nation in the region sensitive to the reactive nationalism that is so often triggered in political campaigns and leadership transitions.

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Japan's Finance Minister Yoshihiko Noda stands up as he is chosen as the party's new leader while the party lawmakers clap their hands during Japan's ruling Democratic Party of Japan leadership vote in Tokyo on August 29, 2011. (Toru Hanai/Courtesy of Reuters)

In her First Take on Japan’s new Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, my colleague Sheila Smith suggests that Mr. Noda is moderate, fair, and an experienced hand in Japanese and global financial affairs. That all sounds pretty good. But apparently from China’s perspective, the new prime minister is nothing but trouble.

While Premier Wen Jiabao and the Chinese Foreign Ministry have offered up short congratulatory statements to the new prime minister, most Chinese commentary has ranged from bleak to belligerent. Chinese analysts point out that the prime minister has not renounced his comments to the effect that Class-A Japanese wartime leaders should no longer be considered criminals nor has he committed not to visit the Yasukuni Shrine. He also has made reference to China’s rising nationalism and naval activities as posing a risk to regional stability. To top it all off, the new prime minister has been a strong supporter of the U.S.-Japan defense alliance.

Given the new prime minister’s apparent policy predilections, it seems to me that Chinese analysts have some reason to be concerned. Read more »

Japanese Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara told a news conference on Sunday he would resign following criticism for accepting political donations from a foreign national, the latest blow to unpopular Prime Minister Naoto Kan's troubled government. (Kim Kyung-Hoon/Courtesy Reuters)

The abrupt resignation of Japan’s Foreign Minister, Seiji Maehara, has left the Kan cabinet reeling. Opposition party leaders smell blood and their gleeful calls for the prime minister’s resignation or for a general election suggest that the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) may be fatally wounded. But there is no victory here to be celebrated.

Japan’s project of political reform is badly served by this level of carnage. Seiji Maehara is not the first of the DPJ’s talents to be handicapped, nor is he likely to be the last. But he is one of Japan’s brightest political stars, and for virtually all outside of Japan, he was a reassuring presence in a party that came to power with few foreign policy experts in its ranks. Like other next generation leaders of the party, Maehara is intelligent, policy savvy—particularly in his favored area of foreign and security policy—and clear in his purpose of serving his country. Some argue he had his faults:  he was outspoken and rushed to judgment. Chinese officials and media targeted him as too tough on China.

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Yesterday, video of the collisions between a Chinese fishing trawler and the Japanese coast guard appeared on YouTube—sent from an account named Sengoku38. Six separate videos, for a total of 44 minutes of footage, taken apparently from the decks of Japanese coast guard vessels showed the tensions aboard as the Chinese vessel altered course twice to collide with two different Coast Guard patrol ships.

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I have just returned from a week in Tokyo, where I attended the annual CSIS-Nikkei conference on U.S.-Japan relations. As I noted in our CFR.org roundup on how Washington should respond to Beijing’s recent assertiveness vis-a-vis its neighbors, I found that many in Tokyo continue to be focused on the after effects of the Senkaku incident.

Last week, I watched Japan’s politicians debate the intricacies of the two-week crisis, and was struck with how little of the debate seemed to be about China. Rather it was focused on Japan itself. Read more »

This Saturday is the seventy-ninth anniversary of the Mukden, or Manchurian, Incident, and, depending on who you believe, Chinese hackers are gearing up to launch massive attacks on the computer networks of the Japanese government and private industry, placing Chinese flags on some websites, knocking others offline, and deleting and destroying data. Or perhaps they are not.
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At midnight on Sunday morning, Japan’s new ambassador to Beijing, Uichiro Niwa, was unceremoniously summoned to meet a leading Chinese Communist Party official, State Councillor Dai Bingguo. Councillor Dai demanded the return of the ship and crew of a Chinese trawler detained by Japan for illegal activity in its territorial waters near the disputed Senkaku Islands.
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