With the New Year holidays over, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe faces the challenge of healing Japan-U.S. ties strained under Japan's previous administration and of improving ties with China and South Korea, soured by various territorial disputes.
Amid concerns over the perceived rightwing shift in Japanese politics, other parts of Asia, with bitter memories of Japan's atrocities during the war, are closely watching the Abe government, which includes many conservative-leaning lawmakers.
Particularly worrying for them is Abe's thinly veiled desire to rewrite the pacifist Constitution and to allow the Self-Defense Forces to exercise the right to collective self-defense, which is banned under the government's interpretation of the war-renouncing supreme charter.