Despite six months of active foreign diplomacy, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe faces an uncertain path to improving ties with China and South Korea as territorial disputes and disagreements on wartime history continue.
Whether Abe and his top Cabinet ministers opt to visit war-linked Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo on the Aug. 15 anniversary of Japan's World War II surrender or during the shrine's autumn festival in October will be closely watched, since such visits would certainly inflame the already frayed ties with its former war victims.
Some pundits say that even if the ruling Liberal Democratic Party wins the House of Councilors election on July 21 and achieves the kind of stable government Japan hasn't seen in years, Abe would still need to maintain a balancing act between Japan's domestic and diplomatic interests.