Those whom the gods would destroy, they grant their wishes. Will that bit of ancient wisdom now hold for the United States and Japan?
For a half-century, the U.S., which wrote Japan's postwar "peace" constitution, has pressed the Japanese to play a greater role in maintaining Asian and global stability. But now that Japan finally has a leader who agrees, the U.S. is getting nervous, with Secretary of State John Kerry supposedly calling Japan under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe "unpredictable."
These strains in the U.S.-Japan relationship — surely the foundation stone of Asian stability — first became noticeable in December, when Abe visited Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, which houses the "souls" of (among others) Class A war criminals from the Pacific War.