Ghosts
    By Pierre Haski
    Lib ration

    Tuesday 26 September 2006

    The new Japanese prime minister's first steps will be closely followed by Japan's neighbors. Shinzo Abe is coming to power accompanied by a solid nationalist reputation: the Japanese press nicknames him "Hawk Prince," by virtue of a very political family lineage for which he professes great admiration. In particular, for a grandfather who was prime minister before the war and interned after the war. Perhaps this irreproachable nationalist will have more forthright bents he can deploy to start out on a new basis with his neighbors, rather than ceding to his natural instincts? With China in particular, the political and economic emergence of which is experienced in Tokyo as a trauma and with which disputes are accumulating. The deterioration of relations between Beijing and Tokyo and the proximity of two potential hot points - North Korea and its nuclear ambitions, and Taiwan, which must confront Beijing's aims - worries the entire region. The new leader, who aspires to revise Japan's "pacifist" constitution nd to "normalize" Japan's place in the world, must first allay the ghosts of the Nippon past with his neighbors. That is all the more indispensable in that - viewed from a Europe that has experienced the Franco-German reconciliation after the war - Japanese ambiguities seem incompatible with the status of power to which Tokyo aspires. Japan cannot hope to heft more diplomatic weight as long as it remains on cold terms with its neighbors. Thus, its ambition to sit as a permanent UN Security Council member has been shot down in full flight by China's opposition. Will Shinzo Abe be the man for Japan's definitive reconciliation with Asia? Nothing is less certain in a region that, while it today incarnates the world's greatest economic dynamism, also contains numerous sources of conflict. It's up to the "Hawk Prince" to show he is aware of these stakes.