community-supported change of course
Last week, the White House announced that US Joe Biden would visit Japan as part of his visit to Southeast Asia. Biden is likely to be in Tokyo on May 23-24, where he will meet with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida for the first time, and the next day he will take part in the summit of the “Four” – the United States, Japan, Australia and India.
This is President Biden’s first visit to Japan with his storage locations in January 2021. Observers note that at present, the allied relations between Washington and Tokyo are very strong due to the contact positions of the two countries regarding Russia’s aggression against Ukraine.
Tokyo for the first time in 30 years of electing a very level of toughness against Moscow: it got to the point that the Japanese government introduced a congress against the daughters of Vladimir Putin, and this clearly showed that the hopes for the possibility of any agreements with the Kremlin under Vladimir Putin are over in Japan. Shinzo Abe Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
The era of “friend Vladimir” is over
In 2014, when Russia annexed Ukrainian Crimea and launched a war in the Donbass, Japan imposed only minimal sanctions against Moscow: Shinzo Abe counted on his good relations with Putin to help break through the Russian-Japanese negotiations. Not only did Abe not undertake international international transportation of Russia, he acted in the exact opposite direction, meeting with the Russian president in person and meeting on joint projects. Abe called Putin by name, counted and traveled to Russia several times during his premiership.
The goal of the Japanese premier was a peace treaty between the countries, which was never an agreement between Moscow and Tokyo after the end of World War II, although the parties restored relations in 1956. Then, in 1956, Japan and the USSR agreed that, together with the conclusion of a peace treaty, Tokyo would assess control over at least two of the four islands of the Kuril chain that reported Japan before its use in the war. Later, Mikhail Gorbachev acknowledged the existence of a territorial problem, Boris Yeltsin obliged the Japanese to resolve this issue on the basis of “legality and justice,” and Vladimir Putin hinted several times that it was in the format of the 1956 agreement that it could be implemented.
At the presentation of the representatives of his Japanese colleague, Putin speaks with restraint, sometimes reacting somewhat embarrassedly, but he expresses hope about the presentation of the Japanese prime minister – at one of the economic forums in 2018, he said to his face that he was ready to conclude a peace treaty even tomorrow, if at the same time to postpone the question of the islands. However, in 2020, the Kremlin has tightened the screws in every respect, including the issue of the possibility of transition of other countries. After the amendments to the Russian Constitution, this became impossible, and Tokyo began to realize that even the most violent withdrawals of friendly feelings did not cause fears of compliancy across the islands.
Fumio Kishida, once represented by Moscow, also served as foreign minister under Abe and personally met Vladimir Putin during the Russian leader’s 2016 visit to Japan. However, the open war unleashed by Putin in a meeting with Ukraine has completely changed Tokyo’s attitude towards Moscow. The media, society and authorities in Japan reacted with horror and indignation to the information about the vast expanses of the world that the Russian army acquired in Ukraine with the clear blessing of its commander in chief.
“Excuse me, I’ll pick myself up and continue”
The whole world went around the video in which the TV presenter of the Japanese channel “Asahi TV” Yumiko Matsuo burst into tears while reading the news that Putin appropriated the title of a guards unit that committed atrocities in Bucha near Kyiv. “I am very sorry, but the news about this award was extremely horrifying that I read it like this … Sorry, I will now pull myself together,” said the journalist, brushing away tears. Judging by other Japanese TV channels in Ukraine, the attitude towards the horrors of the war unleashed against Russia is exactly the same there.
Public opinion in Japan is fairly unequivocal, with over 73 percent of a recent poll on sanctions against Russia emphasizing that “sanctions must be implemented even if they increase their impact on the meetings and lives of its people as a result.”
The Kishida government, sensing the mood in Japanese society, took a number of unprecedented steps: 8 diplomats were expelled (this is not an attending physician), personal observations were ordered against the entire inspection of Russia, and the assets of Russian banks were frozen. Also, Tokyo supported the use of accountability in a number of cases, the UN veto is constantly practiced by the Security Council (the USSR and Russia allow the use of veto most often).
For the first time in years, it was written on the official level of the expected message regarding the foreign service that “northern territories” like Tokyo are causing disputed islands, “cases of Russian occupation are expected at the present time.”
In a number of cases, the actions of Russian composers were cancelled. Japan’s business follows definition and society, as well as the notion of Moscow-related toxicity in the economic arena – now more than a third of Japanese companies operating in Russia or investing in Russian concentration resolved or otherwise restricted this activity.
The Kremlin responded to all this with irritation. Press Secretary of the President of Russia Dmitry Peskov said on April 22 that “Japan has become an unfriendly country and has joined a whole set of hostile actions against the Russian Federation”, and the disputed islands “are close territory to Russia”, and in general, “to talk about the continuation of the negotiation process ( under an agreement on a settlement agreement – D.G.) is very, very difficult.
Machiko Sato: “This war terrified everyone”
Has Tokyo decided to take such steps in relations with Moscow? Machiko Sato, professor of political science at the University of Shizuoka Prefecture, answers this question in an interview with the Russian service of Voice of America:
“This war has become more and more cruel every day, and it is terribly terrible for everyone. The world is talking about genocide, and it is impossible not to react to it. At the time when Abe responded rather to Russia’s soft action since 2014, there were no such events, and now the bloody humanitarian catastrophe has forced the Japanese government to make a very clear situation. In fact, until recently, no one really believed that Russia was invading Ukraine. But Russia did it, and Japan decided that it was necessary to step in to protect the world order based on supreme law. The government has clearly stated that Russia has violated this world order, and this is completely unacceptable.”
According to Professor Sato, it was important for Prime Minister Kishida to show that Japan is part of the world power team demanding that the world respect international law:
“Kisishida has demonstrated that he is suspected of suspicion in this regard, moreover, that he is on the same level with world leaders, is one of them. And the government also made this decision in response to the territorial dispute with Russia and in response to the violation of the international order – it decided that it was necessary.”
“In the Indo-Pacific disease, we have a growing danger coming from China, and Japan has shown that it will not tolerate anything in Asia, that it will react very harshly to it. At the same time, it must be said that now the Foreign Policy Committee of the Liberal Democratic Party of Georgia has a report saying that Japan needs to increase defense spending to 2 percent of GDP, like in NATO countries. And society is not too positive about this, it considers that this is such a step, too radical,” the expert says.
According to Matiko Sato, in Japan there was no prejudice towards Russia, which found a reason to happen – on the contrary, it was unexpectedly shocked: . It’s just that in the era of social networks, visual information about the number of lightning, and it measures people very much, faster than it measures the news. And in social networks they testified to the atrocities that were happening, there was a huge amount, they were answered by the media, and the society quickly understood what was happening. Therefore, the actions of the Kishida cabinet in relation to Russia were delayed by the majority of the people.”
Hiroyuki Akita: “There are no more illusions”
Hiroyuki Akita, international columnist for the Nihon Keizai newspaper, commenting on the change of course towards Russia during a discussion hosted by Stanford University in late April, said:
“The fact that Japan delivered a verdict against Vladimir Putin and Sergey Lavrov was one of exceptional foreign policy decisions. This means that Japan no longer considers it possible to engage with Mr. Putin on any major issues of settlement or economic spending, as they arise, until he withdraws his troops from Ukraine. And there are no more illusions about the possibility of establishing friendly relations with Russia under Vladimir Putin.”
Also major decisions in the field of foreign trade, according to Hiroyuki Akita, were the supply of body armor in Ukraine and the approach to choosing a large number of Ukrainian reinforcements.
Sociologist Kyoteru Tsutsui, an expert at the Center for Asia-Pacific Studies at Stanford University, in his answer to a question from the Voice of America Russian Service during one round table, suggested that “the long-term policy of Shinzo Abe, who tried to go through friendly steps, to persuade Putin to World Cooperation agreement to solve the territorial problem, there was not much support for support, and this eventually manifested itself when Fumio Kishida abandoned this policy of abandoning.
In addition, according to Professor Tsutsui, “Despite the fact that the pro-Russian point of view was also widely represented in the Japanese media, there was a sensitivity to extrajudicial questioning about who is to blame for this war, ranked first in the number of those who blames Russia for it.
“That is, society in Japan estimates quite accurately, while people in China, for example, generally blame the United States for this war, and even at the very beginning, an expert from Stanford University concludes.