Japan's postwar foreign policy has not been awash with Henry Kissingers — persons of status who can secretly or privately negotiate major policy changes with hostile regimes. But if Japan was to have one such person it would be Hitoshi Tanaka, a former deputy foreign minister and the man who secretly negotiated a breakthrough in relations with North Korea, operating through a mysterious Mr. X whom he met repeatedly at secret locations, mainly in China.
The result was the dramatic September 2002 visit to Pyongyang by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, which resulted in the return to Japan of five of the 13 Japanese who had been abducted in the 1970s and '80s by North Korean agents. The visit ended with the equally dramatic Pyongyang Declaration in which Japan promised a range of economic aid to the impoverished North Korean regime, and a normalization of relations.
But Japanese conservatives were not quite as happy about that breakthrough as they could have been. Back in Japan, Tanaka had to suffer an extremist firebombing threat endorsed by the virulently anti-North Korea governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara.