How will future historians size up a Japanese prime minister who became the first among global leaders to meet with an agitator president-elect of the United States and hailed him as a reliable man with leadership?

Much attention was paid by global media when Shinzo Abe called on Donald Trump at his home in New York on Nov. 17. The meeting turned out to be an occasion for Abe to express optimism that Trump may indeed make a better president than many doubters feared.

It was not a bad thing for Abe to seek an early meeting with Trump, because they are bound to face each other in the months and years ahead. The problem was that, whatever the intentions, Abe had to go for a direct meeting with Trump without preliminary groundwork. There would have been nothing to fall back on if the top-level contact ended in failure. If Trump is to keep up his radical position, Abe could be laughed at for spreading internationally a false illusion about the president-elect. But Abe had to take such a risk, because there was nobody around him who had strong connections that led to Trump.