The coalition of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe won a majority of seats in the Diet's Upper House on July 21, consolidating Abe's unlikely political comeback and ending the procession of weak, unstable governments in Tokyo inaugurated during his own first term in office six years ago.

Abe's victory means that U.S. policymakers finally have a pro-American partner in Japan who is capable of making tough decisions at home and abroad, backed by a parliamentary majority that can keep him in power for several years.

Rather than welcoming this development, however, the Obama administration is widely perceived in Japan as being ambivalent about it. The problem appears to be Abe himself; specifically, his reputation as a right-wing nationalist with revisionist views about Japan's wartime history.