Ishiba nudges his ‘little Japan’ closer to China

Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba has been doing a lot of complaining in recent weeks: grumbling about everything from his lack of positive coverage in the domestic press to a packed schedule that’s left little time for his frequent cigarette breaks.

Now, he has another headache: preparation for a meeting with Donald Trump. Having been snubbed by the latter during Ishiba’s first overseas trip to the Americas last year, the premier will travel next week to Washington for a meeting with the new U.S. president, according to reports.

It’s not a moment too soon, with nearly three months having passed since the U.S. election. But in stark contrast to the late Shinzo Abe in 2016, or how world and tech leaders have rushed to schmooze with Trump since November’s victory, Ishiba has not only remained aloof — he has instead spent the last few months building ties with Xi Jinping.

Ishiba’s overtures to China have aroused mounting suspicion among skeptics in Tokyo. The prime minister is difficult to read on foreign policy, but his defense-geek credentials belie the fact that he isn’t much of a hawk. And his outreach to Beijing raises further questions over where he sees Japan’s place between the two great powers.

In the past few months, he’s dispatched his Foreign Minister Takeshi Iwaya to visit Beijing and unveiled a broad expansion of eased visa requirements for Chinese nationals, in a move that raised the ire of many lawmakers who were taken by surprise. Iwaya’s counterpart, Wang Yi, is set to reciprocate that trip next month, ahead of a potential state visit by Xi later this year.

After the first "Quad" meeting of the Trump administration, Iwaya praised Secretary of State Marco Rubio for not antagonizing China and being less of a hard-liner on Beijing than he had feared. Meanwhile, Hiroshi Moriyama, appointed by Ishiba as second-in-command of the Liberal Democratic Party, also visited Beijing this month and is further poised to take over as head of a cross-party group of politicians promoting closer ties with China.

Shifts in geopolitics can be sudden and China is of course a vital trading partner. But, when Ishiba’s top priority should be smoothing ties with the capricious new administration in Washington, all this activity isn’t a good look.

After all, this is the same Chinese administration that banned Japanese seafood imports over spurious, unscientific claims about the release of treated water from Fukushima, accusing Tokyo of treating the ocean as its "private sewer.” Its ships "persistently continue unilateral attempts to change the status quo by force” around the Senkaku Islands, according to Ishiba’s Foreign Ministry. Barely two years have passed since it shot missiles into Japan’s exclusive economic zone. And that’s before we get into its threats against Taiwan and its closer ties to Russia after the latter’s invasion of Ukraine.

It’s easy to see what Beijing’s strategy is here: Relations often improve when U.S.-China ties are souring as isolation prompts the need for alternatives. It’s a smart move to try and use this opportunity to drive a wedge between Tokyo and Washington and pretend, once again, to be the upholders of the rules-based international order while Trump’s chaos reigns.

But Ishiba is playing a dangerous game. According to reports, he passed up a suggestion to meet Trump before the inauguration, an extraordinary contrast to Abe’s 2016 outreach, which was widely credited with sparing the country from blowback during the president’s first administration.

Trump may not have imposed the sweeping sanctions on Beijing he promised, but the administration is stacked nonetheless with hawks. With Rubio naming China the "most potent and dangerous” U.S. adversary, the visuals of Ishiba cozying up to Beijing won’t please the country that guarantees Japan’s security.

Ishiba needs to prioritize. He already suffers from the fact that he has little diplomatic experience. And political commentators in Tokyo are dreading the potential fireworks from a meeting between Trump, who favors directness, and the prime minister who is known for his long-winded, self-deprecating style. And while I’m skeptical of how much attention, if any, Trump has paid to Japanese domestic politics, he may already have little time for Ishiba, the great rival of his friend Shinzo Abe.

Ishiba asserts the importance of diplomacy precisely because China is a threat. And, of course, Japan needs to maintain good relations with its largest trading partner — and hedge its bets with Washington.

Keep in mind, though, that it was Ishiba’s mentor, the former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka, who normalized ties with Beijing in the 1970s. Since taking the helm, Ishiba’s continued references to the words of Tanzan Ishibashi — the short-lived 1950’s leader who advocated for "Little Japan-ism,” an unambitious country that stayed out of international affairs and largely kept out of trouble — are concerning to those of us who believe the best way to keep the peace in Asia is to have a strong Japan that marches in lockstep with the U.S. Trump’s devotion to alliances is, naturally, transactional. But that’s even more reason for Ishiba to show him the value Tokyo can add in reining China in.