The Russians said five to fifteen kilotons, the rest of North Korea’s neighbors and the deeply involved US said more like 550 tons. The general agreement is that the DPRK, in some capacity, tested a nuclear weapon. The general agreement also seems to be that the North Korean - American rivalry and the Kim Family Regime’s strained relations with China are the points to watch, that this means regional tensions are on the rise, that South Korea, the PRC, and Japan will put their differences aside and act largely together, so that TV commentators throughout the English-speaking world can tell their half-interested viewers who’s good, who’s bad, and, if you’re a Fox viewer, who needs to be attacked with overwhelming force and obliterated for not following instructions.

Abe Shinzo, still in the job of Prime Minister of Japan for less than a month, rose to fame about four years ago by speaking out forcefully on the issue of North Korean abduction of Japanese from the shores of Japan, very much in spy movie fashion. He later burnished his reputation by letting fly at Japan’s bad neighbor on other issues as well, notably speaking on behalf of the country after North Korea’s July 5th missile launches. This tough talk may well have been instrumental in his becoming the front-runner and eventual victor in the race for President of the Liberal Democratic Party, hence Prime Minister of Japan. There’s no question that Mr. Abe holds controversially conservative views on history and Japan’s place in it, nor that he is indebted to and often agrees with ultra-nationalist and rightist groups on the domestic front. Prior to his election, he spoke of altering Japan’s Constitution, especially the much-debated pacifist Article 9, a desire he seems to continue to hold, and of inspiring greater patriotism within Japan and assertiveness in foreign policy without. The actions of his predecessor, Koizumi Junichiro, as well as Abe’s own stated intentions, have caused never-sweet relations with the nation’s neighbors, especially South Korea and China, to sour.

All of this, combined with the territorial disputes that Japan has with all of its neighbors, would lead most observers, myself included, to believe that things in this neighborhood were not on path to a big friendly block party, to say the least, and that increasing tensions with North Korea wouldn’t help much.

For starters, I’ve said before, and continue to believe, that the DPRK’s nuclear test was aimed, not at the US, or even China, whom many observers think has territorial designs on North Korea, but at Japan, specifically the tough-talking Abe. Calling his bluff, daring him to try to be tougher than other world leaders before him have been in dealing with the Kim Family Regime.

Toughness and military threats are not what China, Russia, or South Korea want to see. China and South Korea, especially, have preferred a more pragmatic approach, seeing carrots as a necessary counterweight to the sticks that Mr. Abe and his friends in the US seem to like.

During his campaign and in policy speeches, though, Mr. Abe said he intended to visit Beijing and Seoul and try to patch things up. This didn’t seem compatible with a more assertive, nationalistic Japan. Not at all. Not given the reaction South Korea and China were likely to have to such a stance. Another wall between neighbors.
Abe got off to a bad start, too - refusing to answer direct questions on his historical views from opposition lawmakers, especially Kan Naoto of the Democratic Party of Japan, or giving vague, but unsettling answers calling academically uncontroversial issues controversial (a sign that he was paying heed to rightist, revisionist and usually racist and xenophobic historians who claim that Japan was in the right in World War II and trying to protect it’s East Asian neighbors from Western Imperialism, but also, usually, that those same East Asian neighbors were and are worthy of contempt, possessing, to a man, disagreeable traits, an inability to understand civilized society, bad manners, criminal tendencies, and so on.) He also referred to his indicted, but untried war criminal grandfather, former Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke, as, vaguely, “my relative” and said that war criminals were not war criminals because they were not tried under the domestic laws that they themselves had largely written or altered.

Not a good start for a Japanese Prime Minister who wants to improve relations with South Korea and China.

There is promise showing in the rising sun o’er the horizon, though, for Abe Shinzo hath done well. Or at least done the smart thing.

In a Diet session on October 5th, Kan Naoto of the Democratic Party of Japan, stymied in the past by the Prime Minister’s evasions or flat refusal to answer rather direct questions concerning his views on Japan’s responsibility for and actions during World War II, got more specific and asked what Mr. Abe thought of the signing of the 1941 rescript that started the Pacific War by his own grandfather, Kishi Nobusuke, then a member of Prime Minister Tojo Hideki’s Cabinet. The question was along the lines of those asked of the conservative Prime Minister by his opponents in the DPJ before, but this time something new happened.

Abe answered.

“As a result of starting war, many Japanese lost their lives and families, and we left many scars on the people of Asia.

“Particularly, those people in leadership positions at the time, including my grandfather, had great responsibility. Since politicians have to take responsibility for any outcomes, that decision certainly must have been wrong,” he said, contradicting his statement of the next day that the 14 Class A war criminals tried by the Tokyo Tribunal could not be considered war criminals because they were not tried according to domestic law.”

He also said he accepted the Murayama and Kono statements of 1995 and 1993, respectively, after waffling on the issue of accepting them upon taking office, having questioned said statements earlier in his career.

It becomes a matter of which statements an observer chooses to accept. Are you an optimist or a pessimist?

An optimist would accept the statements expressing remorse, unless he were an extreme right wing optimist, in which case he’s be enraged.

Anyone who wants to see Japan’s international relationships improve, especially in Northeast Asia, will welcome these statements of responsibility, coming as they did before Abe’s trip to Beijing and Seoul, during which North Korea tested its nuclear device, because the statements show that the Prime Minister understands how tenuous his country’s relations with its neighbors are what a public relations fiasco his predecessor’s visits to the Yasukuni Shrine were.

Should it matter that conservative Japanese politicians adhere to a highly revisionist and propagandistic view of history? Probably not. In this, they are not different from their South Korean counterparts and pale in comparison to even relative moderates within China’s Communist Government. Do such statements matter, though? Yes, they do.

The hype around China notwithstanding, Japan is the region’s powerhouse. Economically, China is not even in the same league. Militarily, Japan is no joke, either. So they call their military the Self-Defense Forces and classify them formally as a branch of law enforcement. They’re still there and they’re still very well-equipped if perhaps lacking in hands-on experience. (I’m told that nothing other than being in combat can actually prepare one for it and, thankfully not knowing first-hand, think that makes perfect sense.) Being the more powerful party in many negotiations, Japan stands to gain a lot by showing that it is willing to take the first steps toward reducing the tension between itself and its neighbors.

Reports out of the Beijing meeting suggested that Abe’s addressing of a couple of key wartime issues head-on allowed he and Hu Jintao to get right down to other, more important business.

If Mr. Abe is serious about mending relations with South Korea and China, serious about moving towards a future in which the issue Japan’s wartime responsibility has been satisfactorily settled, serious about forming a unified front with the other four members on the five-party side of the Six-Party talks, and serious about the benefits an aging, foreign-resource-dependent Japan will reap from such improved relations, more statements along the lines of his October 5th one, and fewer along the lines of his October 6th whimsy are in order. No country can move forward if its leaders are in a position of fealty to those enthralled with an unrealistic view of the past.

Mr. Abe, your grandfather ran with a bad crowd, you’ve been on the wrong side of history for over a decade. You can set things right from the big chair now.