US President Barack Obama, in a statement ahead of his visit to Tokyo, expresses support for Japan in the event of a conflict over China's Diaoyu Islands.
Dozens of citizens congregated near the Japanese Prime Minister's Official Residence on Wednesday evening.
US President Barack Obama, who prides on being "America's first Pacific President," arrives in Japan for the start of a four-nation Asia tour.
Now, at a time when Japan may have become a heartfelt neighbor, or at least not an enemy, to South Korea, its leadership decided to add fuel to the flames of its bereft next-door neighbor by visiting the war-linked Yasukuni shrine.
The chief of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)'s coalition ally on Tuesday admonished the visit to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine by Cabinet ministers and throngs of lawmakers on Tuesday.
Kazuhiko Togo, director of the Institute for World Affairs at Kyoto Sangyo University, has long called for a moratorium on Yasukuni Shrine visits by serving prime ministers.
HOW HE WILL REASSURE HIS COUNTRY'S allies without leaving the impression the United States and its allies are ganging up on China will be a test of US President Barack Obama's political acumen as he starts a four-nation visit to the Asia-Pacific in Japan on Wednesday.
Just two days before US President Barack Obama's visit to Japan on his four-nation tour of Asia, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe sent a ritual offering to Yasukuni Shrine, a symbol of Japan's militarist past which honors 14 Class-A war criminals. On Tuesday, 146 Japanese lawmakers visited the shrine again. A couple of days before that, Japanese Defense Minister Itsunori Onodera attended a ceremony to begin construction of a radar base on Yonaguni Island, just 150 km from China's Diaoyu Islands.
On Oct 3, 2013, the White House announced that President Barack Obama had cancelled plans to attend the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation meeting because of the US government shutdown. Ever since the US administration had been crafting plans for Obama to visit Asia.
To maintain security, one usually has only two options. The first is to strengthen oneself, and the second is to look for powerful partners to maintain a stronger position vis-a-vis others. In international relations, the former means building defense capabilities so that one state can attack another to maintain its security, while the latter uses a variety of security alignments, including entering alliances.
US President Barack Obama's four-nation East Asian tour from Wednesday is aimed at pushing forward Washington's "pivot to Asia" policy. First, his visits to Japan, the Republic of Korea, Malaysia and the Philippines show the US is determined to consolidate its military presence and use its diplomatic power to ensure the success of the policy.
A spokesman for China's Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday that Japanese lawmakers' mass visit to the war-linked Yasukuni Shrine earlier in the day fuelled controversy over the shrine after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's recent offering there.
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