U.S.-Japan alliance is facing the challenge of China's rise

“China wants to show the world it is a positive partner of the United States,” said Hitoshi Hirabayashi of the Japan Forum on International Relations. “If Japan continues to hesitate or kills time by hesitating, the Americans may naturally be induced to think that Japan is finally not the best partner.”

Across the Pacific, some in Washington are equally worried by signs that Japan is distancing itself from its closest ally by promoting an as yet ill-defined East Asian Community.

Suggestions by some Japanese experts that the U.S. military presence in Japan is outdated also worry some in Washington.

“The fact that a foreign military continues to exist in an independent country means that the 'post-war era' has not ended,” Jitsuro Terashima, chairman of the Japan Research Institute, who is said to have Hatoyama's ear, said on television recently.

Hatoyama sought to allay U.S. concerns last weekend by telling a summit of East Asian leaders in Thailand that Japan's alliance with Washington was at the heart of Tokyo's diplomacy.

Former diplomat Tanaka said Tokyo needed to do a better job of explaining its policies.

But he added that a stronger focus on East Asia was inevitable given Japan's shrinking, ageing population, and should not be viewed with dismay by the United States.

“If you look at all the trade statistics, investment, the movement of people, you would no longer just target the United States as your most important economic market,” he said.

“We have to survive as a prosperous nation and for that we need East Asia to become a much more vibrant place.”

Other efforts by Japan's Democrats to reassess policies put in place by the ousted Liberal Democratic Party during its half century of almost unbroken rule are also potential flashpoints.

An investigation by Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada into a decades-old “secret agreement” between Washington and Tokyo that effectively allowed nuclear-armed U.S. vessels to enter Japan has sparked concern. So has Okada's proposal that the United States should promise not to use nuclear weapons first.

Japan, the only country to suffer an atomic bombing, has long had an ambivalent stance on nuclear arms. Successive LDP governments have stuck to a ban on nuclear weapons but relied on the U.S. “nuclear umbrella” for deterrence.

Despite current concerns, many experts dismiss the notion that a communist China could replace democratic Japan as America's closest Asian partner — even as they point to the need to broaden the alliance beyond traditional security ties to areas such as fighting global warming and disaster relief.

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