HONG KONG — The idea that armed conflict could break out in the Pacific over a handful of godforsaken islands is almost unthinkable, not only for the violence involved but also for the potentially calamitous economic and political repercussions. Political leaders, military officials and security analysts can barely utter the W-word out loud for fear they might be unbottling the genie.
But the dispute between China and Japan in the East China Sea took another harrowing turn last week when a Chinese plane overflew the islands and Japan scrambled some fighter jets in response. The Japanese Defense Ministry said it was “the first known violation of Japanese airspace by a Chinese plane” in half a century, as my colleague Hiroko Tabuchi reported.
Naval vessels from both countries have been patrolling the islands, which are known as the Senkaku in Japan and the Diaoyu in China. Bilateral tensions have been high enough that a bumping or brushing incident at sea — even an accidental one — might well lead to actual fighting.
Sheila Smith, senior fellow for Japan studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, said the dispute “has left both countries deeply suspicious of each other, and public antipathy on both sides of the East China Sea is running high.” In China there have been nasty anti-Japanese riots.
The way ahead — combat or compromise — could conceivably hang on one man, Shinzo Abe, 58, who is due to be sworn in next week as the new prime minister of Japan.
The entire region, along with the United States, is waiting to see which of Mr. Abe’s political personalities emerges most forcefully — the conservative, nationalistic politician with a provocative streak when it comes to China, or the pragmatic statesman who would pull himself and his party back from the fire-breathing campaign rhetoric of recent weeks.
Worryingly, Mr. Abe appeared ready to add a ground dimension to the confrontation at the islands by pledging to station government workers or Coast Guard personnel there.
“If he follows through on what he’s been saying, we could have serious problems,” Gerald L. Curtis, an expert on Japanese politics at Columbia University, told my colleague Martin Fackler. “Who the heck wants to go to war over the Senkakus?”
Naturally, Mr. Abe’s posture in the region also concerns Washington, which is treaty-bound to defend Japan. “American analysts say the United States might balk at risking war with China if Japan is the one provoking a confrontation over the disputed islands,” Martin wrote.
Japan also has a separate but equally emotional and volatile dispute with South Korea: Both countries claim an atoll in the South China Sea known as the Dokdo islands in Korea and the Takeshima in Japan. (South Koreans went to the polls in a national election on Wednesday.)
Mr. Abe has “promised to push for a constitutional revision to convert Japan’s Self-Defense Forces into a full-fledged military,” said Ayako Doi, an associate fellow at the Asia Society.
In the wake of the landslide triumph of Mr. Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party earlier this week, the principal state-run news media in China have already been promising a tougher foreign policy line from the government, especially over the islands. The editorial tone has been almost baleful.
One sample, from Global Times, a daily newspaper affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party:
Once Abe takes office, China should let him know about its firm stance. Only with such pressure will Abe hold China in esteem, otherwise he will think China is in a weak position. In recent years, every time Japan has switched to moderate policy toward China, it has been the result of China’s strong stance rather than its concessions.
Beijing could understandably be anticipating a harder line from Tokyo. Mr. Abe has serious credentials as a nationalist, even a provocative and unapologetic one. In a previous tenure as prime minister, from 2006-7, he denied that the Japanese military had forced women, many of them Koreans, into sexual slavery during World War II.
He also has suggested a revision of Article 9 of the Constitution might be in order, the section that says “the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.” The article also says that “land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained.”
Mr. Abe has visited the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo, a Shinto temple that holds and honors the souls of Japan’s war dead — among them a number of convicted Class A war criminals. These visits cause diplomatic apoplexy in Beijing and Seoul, as both capitals consider Japan to be insufficiently repentant about its military’s atrocities in the war.
In 2007, as prime minister, he gave $425 for the planting of a 6-foot ceremonial evergreen at the shrine.
Mr. Abe went to Yasukuni two months ago in his role, as he pointed out, as the head of the Liberal Democratic Party. And in a nod to his pragmatic side, he walked back an earlier promise that he hoped to visit the shrine one day as prime minister.
“In view of current Japan-China and Japan-South Korea relations, it’s better not to say whether I will visit if I become prime minister,” he told reporters at the time.
In his first press briefing following the election this week, Abe the Conciliator showed up, saying, “China is an indispensable country for the Japanese economy to keep growing. We need to use some wisdom so that political problems will not develop and affect economic issues.”
But Abe the Provocateur also emerged, at the very same briefing, saying that the Senkaku/Diaoyu remain “the inherent territory of Japan.”
“We own and effectively control them,” he said. “There is no room for negotiations about that.”
