Greeting with No Progress

Japan is having the first anniversary of governmental ownership of Senkaku Islands on Wednesday. One update was that Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, had a five-minute conversation with Chinese President, Xi Jinping, out of official meeting schedule of G20 Summit in St. Petersburg, Russia, making no difference in their deteriorated relationship. Both leaders could not take advantage of a chance to get a momentum for improving the relationship between them.

They spent that short period of time in explaining their basic standpoints. “We need to get back to the starting point of ‘strategic reciprocity.’ Humbly facing history, I want to build a future-oriented relationship,” told Abe, according to a report based on a comment of a Japanese official. Chinese government-owned Xinhua News Agency reported that Xi told that Japan needed to explore correct solution on Diaoyu, Chinese name of Senkaku, and interpretation of history.

It became the first direct conversation between the leaders of two countries since PM Yoshihiko Noda met Xi at Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting last September. Officials of Japanese Government expect accumulation of this sort of conversation to improve the relationoship in coming international conferences this year. By maintaining this approach, they believe Abe will somehow take a chance to have an official meeting with Xi.

However, there is uncertainty in domestic politics in Japan for rebuilding the relationship with China. Abe is going to take on legislative reforms to enhance Japan’s security, which purpose is obviously to deal with potential threat from China. Reinterpretation of constitutional limitation in exercising collective self-defense right, establishing Japanese version of National Security Council, and reviewing National Defense Program Guideline would be the focusing points in next session of National Diet this fall. In this process, the assertive attitude of Abe administration against China will clearly appear, making the bilateral relationship more complicated.

Abe also had a short talk with President of South Korea, Park Geunhye, in St. Petersburg. Without shaking hands and fundamental exchange of opinions on current issues between them, they just only had greetings.

As long as Abe keeps his shaky standpoint that Japan might have not invaded foreign soils and seeks reinterpretation of history in the World War II, it is unlikely for Japan’s relationship with those neighbors to improve substantially. If the United States is deeply involved in the quagmire of the civil war in Syria, situation in East China Sea will be more unstable. Even though there is an expectation that China is going to approach Japan when its economy gets decline, economic uncertainty is the same in Japan.