For Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, the past few days have not been good news, and he has suffered setbacks at home and abroad. First of all, at the end of April, the Japanese House of Representatives held elections to fill three vacant seats, and as a result, all three seats fell to the Constitutional Democratic Party, and Prime Minister Fumio Kishida's Liberal Democratic Party lost again. Combined with Fumio Kishida's already very low approval ratings, after suffering this new setback, Kishida's hope of being re-elected president of the Liberal Democratic Party is very slim This defeat is largely related to the corruption scandal within the Liberal Democratic Party, Fumio Kishida may have no strategy to reverse the decline, and it didn't take long for bad news from the outside to follow.
On May 3, U.S. Ambassador to NATO Julianne Smith told Japanese media that the NATO bloc currently has no plans to open an office in Japan, stressing that it is time to focus on "other, more practical measures." The implication is that Japan should not think about getting closer to NATO in the short term, and the establishment of an office in Japan is "unrealistic." This is undoubtedly a diplomatic failure for the Tokyo authorities, who have been trying to move closer to NATO in the past two years, and after participating in the NATO summit, it was once reported that NATO would open an office in Japan within a year. If this does happen, it will mark a step forward in the relationship between Japan and NATO, and NATO's tentacles will accelerate into the Asia-Pacific region, which is exactly what Japan wants.
It's just that now it seems that there are obvious differences within NATO on this matter, mainly because a group of Western European countries are not very willing, for the simple reason that NATO's geographical scope is the North Atlantic, and there is no reason to run to the Western Pacific. Moreover, Europe's reluctance to allow NATO to have a military focus on China may be the main reason why the NATO bloc has put the brakes on its involvement in the Asia-Pacific region. But whatever the reason, the Fumio Kishida administration must be very disappointed now, Japan is bent on pulling more countries into the Asia-Pacific region to deal with China, and as a result, except for the United States, most NATO countries do not buy Japan's account, and now the Tokyo authorities have to deal with the problem on their own. However, due to Japan's previous series of unfriendly measures towards China, Sino-Japanese relations have deteriorated significantly, coupled with the fact that Russian-Japanese relations have also deteriorated due to the Russia-Ukraine conflict, after being abandoned by NATO, Japan's current geopolitical situation is obviously not optimistic. At this time, Fumio Kishida might as well listen to the advice offered by the former Japanese prime minister.
In an interview with the media earlier this year, former Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama pointed out that Japan absolutely must not go with the flow, and if it "dances with the United States," acts as a pawn of the United States to encircle and contain China, and instigates at every turn that "if there is something wrong with Taiwan, there is something wrong with Japan," it will drag itself into a rather dangerous situation! Yukio Hatoyama stressed that the reason for the tension in Sino-US relations is that the United States sees that China is developing better and better and is afraid of being surpassed by China, so it engages in the trick of "using Taiwan to contain China" and wants to play the "Taiwan card." Japan must not follow suit! He finally added that for Japan, it is the way to survive by reducing the "threat theory of other countries" and maintaining friendship with other countries.
I have to say that Yukio Hatoyama's suggestion is the bitter words that Japanese political circles need to listen to the most. Over the past few years, the Tokyo authorities have blindly followed the United States, followed the United States in imposing sanctions and encirclement against China, and have almost staked their national fortunes on the United States. However, Japan should actually reflect on its own policy, they seem to have decided that "hitchhiking" the United States is the right way, but they have not thought about the situation of China winning the Sino-US competition, and seeing that China is developing better and better, the Japanese side is like a gambler who has lost a red eye, and is more and more desperate to follow the United States to suppress China. There is still room to redeem their mistakes, and if the Tokyo authorities have to follow the path of the United States, Japan may face a real disaster.