Diplomacy without Information

China keeps on approaching Senkaku Islands from the beginning of this year, sending official ships to territorial seawater of Japan around them. Counting on military support of the United States, the administration led by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has still been reluctant to have serious talk with China, regarding it as giving in China’s appeal of existence of territorial dispute over them. However, there appears U.S. reluctance to back Japan up. The biggest supporter of Japan was negative on the decision of laying the islands under control of the government.

Asahi Shimbun reported on Tuesday about the details of dialogue between then Prime Minister, Yoshihiko Noda, and U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton. “Is it really necessary to nationalize the islands? What idea do you have after the purchasing?” Clinton asked Noda in the leaders meeting of Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation in Vladivostok, Russia, on September 8^th, 2012. “It is possible for the national government, rather than Tokyo Metropolitan government, to stably control the situation there, and it was China who changed the status quo first,” replied Noda reading out the paper prepared by his staffs.

The report also revealed the conversation between senior officials of both governments. Two months before the meeting of Noda and Clinton, Kurt Campbell, Assistant Secretary of State Department, asked Akihisa Nagashima, a political adviser of Noda, whether the purchase was the best choice. Although Nagashima stressed that the government of China had understood Japan’s policy, Campbell doubted the accuracy of the information Japan had gotten from China.

Noda had been underestimating the significance of the Senkaku issue for China. In a interview to Yomiuri Shimbun last October, Noda told that he had realized in the meeting with then Chinese President, Hu Jintao, “core interest” for China to be Uygur and “significant concern” to be Senkaku. But, China later showed their intention to include Senkaku in their core interests. Noda also revealed that he did not expect that Hu would be raising the Senkaku issue in the instant talk with Noda at the meeting of APEC. “I thought it could not be happening for me to explain about Senkaku,” told Noda. If you are correct, what in the world is Prime Minister’s job in diplomacy, Mr. Noda?

That is what the diplomacy of Japan is about. Those episodes say that Japanese diplomacy is desperately in need of information. Professional diplomats are too busy in approaching domestic politics for protecting their bureaucratic or even personal interests to collect information from foreign countries. The government did still not learned from its failure in understanding the intention of U.S. Government on Futenma relocation issue.