Satisfied with Hospitality

They called it warm hospitality. President of United States Barack Obama welcomed Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to his office building painted white in Washington, D.C. on Tuesday. Obama showed Abe around memorial building for his adoring former President Abraham Lincoln the previous day. In the joint press conference after the business meeting, Obama called Abe “Shinzo” as he had supposedly been instructed by his staffs and extended a long monologue on violence in Baltimore that had nothing to do with Abe. The Japanese did not diminish sober image on Obama as businesslike.

Trying to look friendly nice guy, Obama inserted equivocal Japanese language, Konnichiwa, at the beginning of his remark in the joint press conference. When he was stressing the importance of their bilateral alliance, he said “otagai no tame ni,” with translation of “with and for each other.” No one in Japan watching the live TV footage understood why he used Japanese language in that part of his speech. Simultaneous translator of NHK was apparently confused with unfamiliar pronunciation delivered from his mouth.

Abe responded Obama with calling him Barack as the first word on his turn. The reason was obvious to Japanese audience. He just wanted to say he could call American President in his first name as former Japanese Premier like Nakasone or Koizumi did. Delighted with Obama’s escort to Lincoln Memorial the day before, Abe tried to introduce his conviction for international peace in the way Martin Luther King took a half century ago. “We have a dream,” told Abe, “that is to create a world abound in peace and prosperity.” But, U.S. was still on its way, far before achieving international peace, to the dream that one day even the state of Maryland would be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

For Abe, this state visit to U.S., for the first time these nine years, is an opportunity to prove the legitimacy of his security policy, which has been controversial reinterpretation of the Constitution of Japan. The hospitality of Obama must have been nothing wrong at all. However, the revised U.S.-Japan security guideline was an outcome of close consultation between their staffs. On the other hand, both government could not reach a final agreement on Trans-Pacific Partnership as they had always been.

After all, Obama and Abe showed no leadership to settle crucial issues such as relocation of U.S. Marine base in Okinawa or how to deal with Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. The meeting was almost nothing more than a ceremony for appealing the world that they were as generous as talking in partner’s language or calling each other in the first name as humans do.