Prime Minister Shinzo Abe will attend the East Asia Summit and other ASEAN-related meetings in Brunei on Wednesday and Thursday, aiming to reaffirm cooperation with his counterparts from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations for the success of a special summit they plan to hold in Tokyo in mid-December.
On the margins of the regional summits, Abe is scheduled to hold bilateral talks with the leaders of Brunei, which is hosting the regional meetings as this year's chairman of ASEAN, and of Australia and New Zealand.
One big question is whether Abe will be able to schedule meetings with the leaders of China and South Korea, with which Tokyo has rocky ties due to territorial disputes and differing interpretations of history.