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Updated Monday, September 7, 2009 10:08 am TWN, By Joe Hung, Special to The China Post

Post-LDP Japan will be pro-who?

The incoming prime minister will stick to the same pro-America policy, albeit he and his mentor Ichiro Ozawa said time and again their Democratic Party of Japan, if it came into power, would distance Tokyo from Washington. Of course, they want some changes. For instance, Japan wants Uncle Sam's support for joining the U.N. Security Council. Washington has only provided lip service, but doesn't truly try to help. Hatoyama and Ozawa do not want Japan to pay more for the deployment of U.S. forces in their country, simply because its national treasury cannot afford to do so. They don't want Washington's objection to an amendment of what is known as the MacArthur Constitution, forced upon the defeated Japan in 1946. Well, all this is 100 percent pro-Japan with changing its pro-America stance.

Hatoyama and company have to improve relations with their giant neighbor. Of course, they are not going to give China any more financial assistance, for Tokyo can't and Beijing doesn't want it with strings attached. China is well-to-do enough to turn it down now.

On the other hand, the pro-China policy Hatoyama has inherited may turn less pro-China, for Japan considers it not in its national interests to play the second fiddle in an emerging free trade zone of Ten-plus-Three in Asia. The Ten are the member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and the Three include the People's Republic, Japan and South Korea in that hierarchic order.

The 13 countries were the members of the Great East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere with Imperial Japan as the leader. As a matter of fact, Koizumi advocated the Ten-plus-Three, which is scheduled to come into being in 2011, hoping Japan would play the first fiddle in a born-again co-prosperity sphere in Great Asia where Uncle Sam must be barred.

That's why Hatoyama is trying to develop better relations with ASEAN states and recover the four Kurile Islands from Russia under a new policy of fraternity, which is the motto of his grandfather.

Eisaku Sato, Kishi's sibling brother, recovered the Ryukyu Islands from U.S. occupation in 1972, and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Hatoyoma wants to get back Habomai, Kunashiri, Shikotan and Etorofu, all occupied by the Soviets since the end of the Second World War in 1945. He wishes to make Japan's irredentist dream come true.

He also wants to win friendship of ASEAN countries, all of which were once occupied by Japan's imperial army, so that they may have a big brother to turn to if and when they are twisted around Beijing's little finger. One thing he cannot forget to do is to extend fraternity to Taiwan, which is not included in Tokyo's new co-prosperity scheme and which Japan has taken for granted.

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