EAST ASIA: ‘Koizumi’s Exit Good for Regional Relations’

By Suvendrini Kakuchi Reprint | | Print |

Suvendrini Kakuchi

TOKYO, Jun 15 2006 (IPS) - Analysts believe that when Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi demits office in September it will open the door for improved relations with China and a better overall environment in the region.

”I believe Japan and China now realise that enough is enough and the end of the Koizumi era would provide a timely opportunity to change direction. Growing territorial disputes in East Asia can only be solved through building a negotiating platform rather than giving each other the cold shoulder,” explains Prof. Takeshi Inoguchi, a respected international relations expert at Chuo University.

Sino-Japanese relations have sunk depressingly low as a result of an abrasive political stance adopted by Koizumi ever since he took office in 2001. This was marked by his frequent visits to the Yasukuni Shrine to pay obeisance to the souls of those executed as war criminals and responsible for the harsh colonisation of China, Korea and most of South-east Asia during the early twentieth century.

Koizumi’s explanations that he needed to pay his respects to Japan’s war dead have only infuriated Beijing and Seoul which see in his acts lack of repentance for large-scale atrocities carried out by the Japanese Imperial Army, that ended only with the defeat of Japan at the close of World War II.

”Koizumi’s Yasukuni visits created bilateral enmity which has not been mutually beneficial to Asia. The situation must change soon,” Inoguchi told IPS, referring to recent comments from Washington that called for Tokyo to change its policy on the controversial shrine.

Signs of a warming in bilateral ties were available at a meeting in Qatar, at the end of May, between Japan’s Foreign Minister, Taro Aso and his Chinese counterpart, Li Zhaoxing.

The meeting was followed by Japan ending its 2005 ban on overseas development assistance loans to China. Tokyo had voted to stop low-interest loans to Beijing in reaction to China’s decision to conduct natural gas drilling on the Senkaku islands, in the

East China Sea, claimed by both sides.

The two ministers are scheduled to meet again, late July, on the sidelines of the regional conference of the Association of South-east Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Malaysia.

‘’Even if the two top leaders do not meet, it does not mean foreign ministers will not meet. I proposed (to Li) what I would do to any country,” Aso was quoted in the Japanese media as saying on Jun. 4.

Japanese newspapers also reported on Jun. 11 that Chinese President Hu Jintao had said in Beijing that he ‘’hopes to visit Japan at an appropriate time and when conditions are right,” during a meeting with the Japanese ambassador in Beijing.

Hu’s comment, expressing intention to meet a Japanese leader, is the first since he took office in March 2003, and Aso’s meeting with Li in Qatar was the first foreign ministerial contract in about a year.

Experts in Japan explain the next key step is heavily dependant on who will be chosen as Koizumi’s successor by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party when it holds internal elections in mid-September.

The main contenders are Shuzo Abe, 49, who is close to Koizumi and the older Yasuo Fukuda who visits China often.

In an interview with IPS, Harumi Arima , a veteran political watcher and author, contends Abe, who is leading in opinion polls showing 31.7 percent support, will, if he takes over the helm, follow a low-key policy on Yasukuni reflecting the growing pressure on Japan to end the current deadlock in East Asia and assuage feelings on every side.

”Abe is a pragmatic politician who, despite his conservative leanings, will bow to external pressure and work to improve the strained atmosphere in East Asia,” he said.

Arima explained that Japan’s relations with China are important for the United States that wants to contain the rise of Beijing’s influence in Asia and Is worried that Japan is losing its influence in the region because of the Yasukuni controversy.

In May, Michael Green, a senior advisor to U.S. President George Bush, speaking at a symposium in Tokyo, said that Yasukuni had “undermined decades of goodwill and has caused Japan to lose altitude and air speed in Asia. So much so that is hurting the U.S.”.

Arima points to the new pacts between Washington and Tokyo to strengthen their security alliance that has made it all the more crucial for Japan and China to build a working relationship that will act as a cornerstone of stability in East Asia.

New provisions in the Japan-U.S. security pact enacted over the past two years have laid a new framework that will accommodate military collaboration between the two countries to fight the U.S.-led anti-terrorism global war.

‘’The U.S. is also not quite sure of how to meet China’s growing influence in Asia which is all the more reason why it wants that Japan builds a dialogue with China,” he said.

Prof. Tomoyuki Kojima, China watcher at Keio University, explains that a negotiating platform among Japan, China and South Korea is important to solve looming territorial disputes – mainly the sharing of gas exploration rights with China and drawing up of fisheries collaboration pacts with South Korea.

Both Japan and South Korea claim rights over a group of rocky uninhabited islands, called Tokto in South Korea and Takeshima in Japan.