US President Barack Obama’s Asian tour starts in Japan today. It is feared that it has lifted the lid on a pressure cooker of regional animosities, exposing ancient rifts that Washington can no longer ignore.
Obama touches down in Tokyo a day after nearly 150 lawmakers paid homage at a shrine regarded by neighbouring nations as a symbol of Japan’s brutal imperialist past, and shortly after the prime minister made an offering to the controversial site.
Meanwhile China on the weekend seized a huge Japanese freighter over what a Shanghai court says are unpaid bills relating to Japan’s 1930’s occupation of vast swathes of the country.
Lurking in the seas to the far southwest are coastguard boats with armed naval vessels at the ready — playing out a volatile dispute between Tokyo and Beijing over ownership of a small chain of East China Sea islands.
And to the west, an ever-unpredictable North Korea which has denounced the presidential tour as “reactionary and dangerous” appears to be trying to seize the spotlight with preparations for a fourth nuclear test.
