The final international appointment for Japan’s outgoing Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, who has resigned ahead of schedule, was his September 20–23 trip to the United States.
On the significance of the latest Quad summit
Both leaders were faced with the task, urgently and in the most appropriate venue, of tying up any loose ends in relation to the functioning of the project that they initiated during the remaining few weeks of their tenure. And despite the not infrequent perception of the Quad configuration (particularly of late) as an “obscure group of secondary importance” given the scale of the processes unfolding in the Indo-Pacific region, the results of the summit held on September 21 this year in Wilmington, Delaware, tended to suggest quite the opposite.
Especially if the directions outlined in the extensive final document adopted at the end of the summit actually come to fruition. Significantly, the document contains no saber-rattling declarations, and this is entirely consistent with the hybrid nature of the struggle between the main participants in the current stage of the “Great World Game.”
In this regard, it should be noted that its main focus is much more on the issue of developing favorable positions in the countries of the Global South. Japan has been increasingly active in these countries in recent years, and Quad could become another important tool for Japan to spread its influence there.
However, the importance of the military-political element in Tokyo’s foreign policy is also becoming more and more noticeable. The base of this element remains the US-Japanese military and political alliance, and Fumio Kishida and Joe Biden once again reaffirmed the need to strengthen this relationship during a meeting between the two leaders held on the sidelines of the Quad summit. Both leaders had emphasized the importance of this issue six months earlier, during a state visit to the United States by Fumio Kishida.
Fumio Kishida also had one-to-one meetings with the Prime Ministers of each of the other two Quad participants, India’s Narendra Modi and Australia’s Anthony Albanese. Relations with both of these countries are becoming increasingly important to Tokyo as Japan emerges as a major player in the Indo-Pacific region.
Fumio Kishida at the UN General Assembly
The second part of Fumio Kishida’s trip to the United States involved a series of events held in New York, where the Japanese leader—for such we must call him, while he is still in office—participated in the regular opening session of the UN General Assembly. On September 22, Fumio Kishida spoke at the so-called “Future Summit” organized by the UN Secretariat.
However, deserving of greater attention were the meetings held by Fumio Kishida on the margins of the General Assembly with a number of foreign political figures who, for obvious reasons, were absent from Wilmington. Among them were top EU and NATO officials, including Ursula von der Leyen, Charles Michel, and Jens Stoltenberg. These meetings clearly demonstrated, once again, the increasing importance of the “European component” in Japan’s foreign policy. This, however, does not change Japan’s main focus, which is on the situation in the Indo-Pacific region.
Meeting between Fumio Kishida and the President of Mongolia, Ukhnaagiin Khürelsükh
In the early 2010s, in a reflection of the way the geopolitical game and Japan’s place in it was changing, Tokyo demonstrated a renewed interest in gaining a position of influence in Mongolia’s politics. Today Tokyo sees Mongolia as, among other things, a kind of base for building relations with North Korea and with the countries of Central Asia and the wider Turkic-speaking world.
As recently as a decade ago, Ulaanbaatar served as a negotiating platform in attempts to solve the problem of relations with North Korea. Having received a stern warning from “big brother,” Tokyo said that it was not engaged in any behind-the-scenes (and even behind Washington’s back) intrigues with Pyongyang, but was only trying to solve the notorious problem of the abducted Japanese citizens. However, Japan’s true goals regarding both North Korea and the Central Asian region as a whole must have been in Fumio Kishida’s mind when it was reported (repeatedly) in the first half of this year that the Japanese Prime Minister planned to visit Mongolia and a number of Central Asian countries.
But after Fumio Kishida’s announcement about his imminent resignation, this tour had to be abandoned. The remaining few weeks of his tenure as Prime Minister, however, were used for a number of quite urgent appearances on the international stage. These included a one-day visit to South Korea on September 6 and his trip to the United States.
It was in the US, on the margins of the UN General Assembly that Fumio Kishida met with the Mongolian President on September 22. Although this meeting only lasted about 40 minutes, it was impressive to see the wide range of topical issues related to the two countries’ relations, as listed in the Appendix to the Japanese Foreign Ministry’s brief official announcement of the event. The first item on this list (“Accelerate the signing of the Agreement on the Transfer of Defense Equipment and Technology”) has attracted special attention from the Japanese media.
A tour to Mongolia and Central Asia is certain to take place, but it will be conducted by Japan’s new Prime Minister.
Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa accompanies Fumio Kishida on his final official foreign trip
Finally, it is worth noting the remarkable activity on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly of Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa, who accompanied Fumio Kishida throughout his trip to the United States. Of all her activities in New York, let us briefly highlight the most significant. This was her meeting on September 23 with her Chinese counterpart Wang Yi. To restate, once again, the obvious, the transformation of the entire situation in the Indo-Pacific region depends significantly on the state and development of relations between Japan and China.
And, although the present the author makes every effort not to omit any positive developments, it has to be admitted that these relationships, to put it mildly, “leave much to be desired.” One recent positive development was a report about China’s alleged readiness to lift the de facto embargo on seafood imports from Japan, which it imposed a year ago in response to the beginning of the discharge into the sea of “purified” water from the reservoirs of the damaged nuclear power plant in Fukushima. This was one of the main topics discussed in the meeting between the Japanese and Chinese Foreign Ministers, and a (future) solution was approved by China, subject to the fulfillment of certain conditions.
The second topic was an extremely unpleasant incident, both in itself and in its impact on bilateral relations: the murder on September 19 of a ten-year-old Japanese boy in the Southern Chinese city of Shenzhen by (yet another) psychopath. But, in contrast to a similar incident three months ago, it was not possible to smooth things over quickly, such were the passions that were aroused on this occasion. In the Japanese media and online claims appeared to the effect that the date of this incident was not accidental (the so-called “Manchurian Incident” began on September 18, 1931) and, in general, the current education system in China is, allegedly, “nationalist and xenophobic” in nature. It is noteworthy that this last point was immediately picked up in Taiwan.
Anyway, Yoko Kamikawa’s negotiations with Wang Yi were not easy, and their significance, it should be emphasized once again, lies more in the very fact that they took place.
Upon returning home, however, both Japanese politicians were immediately plunged back into the complex issues relating to the upcoming personnel and political changes in the country’s leadership. But that is a topic for a separate article.
Vladimir Terekhov, expert on the issues of the Asia-Pacific region, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”
