Assertive Japan

When Shinzo Abe became prime minister of Japan two months ago, it was widely expected that he would stiffen his country's nationalist backbone. Many thought such a move was overdue, not least the Americans, whose government has felt since the mid-1980s that Japan does not pay enough for its own security. Nevertheless, it was also expected that he would go about the enterprise in a typically Japanese, circumspect way and not rush things along. That expectation, it seems, was wrong. Mr Abe has said and done a few things that have started to worry people. The verbal faux pas, if it can be called that, came with his remark over "comfort" women; the action has come with the security arrangements he is entering into with Australia. Shinzo Abe has started stirring the pot in no uncertain way. It will be interesting to wait and see what results.

Comfort women were women dragooned into serving the sexual needs of Japanese soldiers at war. Korea was the biggest sufferer on this account because it was colonised in 1910. Since 1945, when Japan lost the war, it has been demanding constant penitence from Japan, which has apologised several times already. On March 1, Mr Abe was asked how he intended to deal with the demand from his party that the whole issue be examined afresh. Mr Abe replied that it all depended on how you defined coercion, whose meaning was not very clear to him. This was interpreted, wrongly or rightly, as his saying that maybe the Japanese military had not forced women into unpaid prostitution. A huge controversy broke out and the progress he had made in relations with China and Korea came under strain, although China responded in a muted fashion. Washington also pursed its lips. As a Korean newspaper asked, "What was he thinking?" Could it be that he thinks the 1993 Japanese statement admitting guilt was wrong?

Then came the news that Japan and Australia had signed a comprehensive security agreement. The only other country with which Japan has such an agreement is the US. The Chinese weren't pleased because you don't need much imagination to see that any security arrangement in the region can only be aimed at China. It needs to be borne in mind, however, that the agreement only formalises an existing situation. Japan has bases in Australia, there is maritime cooperation between the two on joint exercises and counter-terrorism activities. They also take part in anything that the US organises. With this formalisation, Japan has become one of Australia's most important security partners, joining the US, the UK, New Zealand and Indonesia. In regional terms, this is an important development which China""much as the USSR did in the latter half of the 1940s""is bound to see as an attempt to encircle it. Its initial reaction has been cool but as a large number of Australian security experts have pointed out, it is bound to be peeved with Australia. The Chinese foreign ministry' spokesman said, "We are tranquil in our heart"! It was left to a professor of international relations, who is known to speak for the government, to say that China was miffed.