The dramatic end to Japan's half-century of conservative rule in a late August election led almost immediately to a public spat with the United States. An inward-looking Japan that had reflexively followed the American lead suddenly was no longer an obedient ally.

At a time when the US was trying to woo a recalcitrant China to become a "strategic partner", Japan's insistence on reopening an agreement over US military bases seemed to upset the regional balance. But there are recent signs of a concerted effort on both sides to put underlying strategic interests back in the forefront, propelled in part by the recent eruption of frictions between China and the US.

The row began with the newly elected Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's call for more "equal" relations with the US, his advocacy of an East Asian Community à la the EU, and his focus on repairing ties with China. Put together, some saw a nascent urge to abandon the post-war security alliance. A senior State Department official went so far as to tell the Washington Post in late October that the "the United States had ‘grown comfortable' thinking about Japan as a constant in US relations in Asia. It no longer is, he said, adding that ‘the hardest thing right now is not China, it's Japan.'"

The trigger was growing frustration over the Hatoyama government's handling of the relocation of the US Marine air base at Futenma on Okinawa. The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) consistently opposed the deal to relocate the base elsewhere within Okinawa, expressing sympathy for the disproportionate burden of the US military presence in Japan born by Okinawans. American officials were loathe to reopen an agreement that had taken years to negotiate and believed the Japanese government exaggerated its domestic political constraints.

At the same time, Japan seems eager to hew its own course with China, to improve relations and begin to build the foundation for a new Asian community. If one is to believe US officials, alarm bells have been ringing among their allies and others in Asia over the rift with Japan. The talk of building a regional organization that might exclude the US made Singapore, Australia, South Korea, the Philippines and even Vietnam worried that this would only aid Chinese ambitions.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration itself was ardently wooing China. President Obama, on the eve of a trip in November, spoke of creating a "strategic partnership." In Beijing, the President avoided public finger wagging. Discussion of difficult issues such as human rights, Tibet and sanctions against Iran were conducted largely, if at all, behind closed doors.

Given their own pursuit of Chinese partnership, American officials could hardly object to Tokyo's efforts along the same lines. In public, they said this is not a zero sum game, that an easing of Sino-Japanese tensions could aid security and stability in the region for everyone. But some US officials soon saw evidence of Sino-Japanese collusion to push the US out of Asia. Privately they pointed to what was considered a telling moment following a trilateral summit of Chinese, Japanese and South Korean leaders in Tianjin in October. Talking to reporters after the meeting, Hatoyama had spoken about Japan's desire to lessen its "dependence" on the US. American officials considered Hatoyama's actions a gross display of obeisance to the Chinese.

Accusations that Japan was drifting into Chinese arms grew louder after DPJ Secretary General Ichiro Ozawa led a group of about 140 lawmakers on an adulatory visit to China in early December. Then Hatoyama and Ozawa raised hackles when they pushed for the Emperor to receive a visiting Chinese senior official, the heir apparent for leadership, Xi Jinping. However, these depictions of Tokyo lurching toward Beijing ignore the gradual evolution of Japanese policy and the deep-seated rivalry that persists.

Sino-Japanese relations reached a low point five years ago after anti-Japan demonstrations were apparently sanctioned by Chinese authorities. Unresolved wartime historical issues drove those outbursts, prompted by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visits to the Yasukuni shrine, which honors Japan's war dead. Disputes over oil and gas rights in the East China Sea threatened to explode. And China launched a campaign to block Japan's bid for permanent membership in the UN Security Council.

Japanese policymakers began to worry about the impact of these tensions on Japan's growing economic interdependence with China. They were critical of Koizumi's one-sided focus on the US-Japan security alliance.

"To weather the wild seas of the 21st century, Japan's diplomacy must have two elements: the Japan-US alliance and a Japan-China entente," wrote Makoto Iokibe, a defense specialist who now heads the Japanese Defense Academy, in the summer of 2006. "A combination of a gas field accord and a depoliticized Yasukuni issue would provide Japan and China with a clear view for the joint management of East Asia."

Beginning in late 2006, a succession of Japanese administrations has made concerted efforts to repair ties with Beijing and Seoul. Though the atmosphere with China has improved, substantive differences remain. In January, Japan's foreign minister warned that Tokyo would take action if China continued to violate a 2008 deal to develop oil and gas fields jointly. When Ozawa met the Chinese defense minister in December, he said the Japanese see China's military modernization as a threat. Ozawa suggested that if such fears were not eased, Japan might be prompted to undertake its own arms build up.

The Hatoyama government has also moved to upgrade ties, including security links, with Asian powers that share a fear of China, including India, Indonesia and South Korea. Ozawa stopped in Seoul after his visit to China where he apologized for Japan's colonial rule in Korea and pledged to push through legislation granting voting rights to Korean residents in Japan, an issue of great importance to Koreans and opposed by conservatives in Japan.

Recent events seem to have caused the US to reassess its handling of relations in Northeast Asia. There is growing evidence of an emboldened China that seems to interpret America's bid for a strategic embrace with the country as a sign of weakness. The authorities in Beijing took a tougher line toward internal dissent, openly clashed with the US at the climate change talks in Copenhagen, balked at cooperation on sanctions against Iran, and brushed off American protests over evidence of cyber attacks on Western firms.

After all this, America has begun to soften its tone toward Tokyo. Officials pledge patience as the new government looks for a solution to the base problem, while also mounting a public effort to convince Japan that the Marine presence in Okinawa is key to "deterrence" of North Korea and China. There is a renewed emphasis on broadening the security agenda to include other issues, from cyber security to climate change. Hatoyama, too, has emphasized that the Japan-US alliance remains "a cornerstone for Japan to enhance its cooperative relations with other Asian countries, including China."

Whether any real lessons have been learned in Tokyo or Washington remains to be seen. But perhaps the turn in Sino-US relations has reminded people in Tokyo and Washington that there remains a strategic purpose to the alliance.

Several developments have come together to trigger renewed media interest in the "Myanmar problem."  These developments include:  (a) changes in US policy toward the military junta that rules Burma/Myanmar; (b) rumors of possible shifts in the stances taken by the junta and its iconic opponent Daw Aung San Suu Kyi; (c) President Obama's scheduled November 2009 summit with all ten ASEAN leaders including Myanmar's own Senior General Than Shwe; and (d) the prospect of an "election" in Myanmar in 2010.

Of possible interest to SEAF website visitors in this context are remarks by US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and by SEAF's own Don Emmerson.  The comments are accessible in both audio and text formats at http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/connectasia/stories/200911/s2740671.htm (Clinton) and http://www.radioaustralia.net.au/connectasia/stories/200911/s2740670.htm (Emmerson).  The transcript of Emmerson's interview, conducted over the phone by Radio Australia's Sen Lam on 11 November 2009, represents spontaneous informal speech, of course, not polished text. 

In April 2005, fierce anti-Japanese protests broke out in China.

Triggered in part by Japan's approval of newly revised history textbooks which glossed over the Japanese wartime abuses of six decades ago, the demonstrations were the most provocative upsurge of anti-Japanese unrest China had seen in years.

It was not the first time problems of the historical sort had sparked trouble between the neighbours in North-East Asia.

But researchers at Stanford University's Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Centre hope that their work will damp down future outbursts and open a path to lasting reconciliation.

Led by director Gi-Wook Shin and co-director Daniel C. Sneider, researchers are completing an ambitious three-year project to examine how the main players in North-east Asia - China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan - along with the United States, form their views of the past, or what the scholars call "historical memories."

Entitled Divided Memories and Reconciliation, the project began in 2007 and is divided into three phases. The first stage involves comparing how shared historical events are depicted in history textbooks of the five societies, as history education plays a crucial role in shaping citizens' perspectives on the past.

The second stage, which began last year, looks at the treatment of the 1931-1951 wartime period in the films of China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and the US.

In the third phase, researchers will survey elite opinion makers in China, Japan, South Korea and the US for their views on historical issues.

The study, said Mr Sneider, stems from the understanding that unresolved historical issues are drivers of regional tension, and continue to bedevil relations to this day.

"The past is very much part of the present. Unresolved problems of the past feed mistrust and suspicion," he told The Sunday Times. "History issues also feed rising nationalism that can undermine government efforts to repair damaged relations."

Despite growing economic and cultural ties, wounds inflicted in the time of war and colonialism still fuel anti-Japanese sentiment in China and South Korea. The outcome of China's civil war resonates today in tension between the mainland and Taiwan.

The goal was not to forge a common historical account for the region or reach a consensus on specific events, said Mr Sneider. He noted that such attempts by historians and government committees have had limited success.

Stanford University historian Peter Duus explained: "Writing a common history is not feasible politically because the teaching of history in East Asian countries is tied to building and strengthening national identity."

Instead, Stanford researchers felt it was more fruitful to "try to recognise and understand how each society has developed its own distinctive memory of the past, and how that has affected its national identity and relations with others", commented Prof Shin.

Prof Duus and Prof Shin were writing in separate chapters included in a soon-to-be-published edited volume on the textbook study. Parts of the book were seen by The Sunday Times.

To facilitate the textbook study, researchers translated into English the most widely circulated high school history textbooks used in China, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea and the U.S.

Focusing on the period from the beginning of the Sino-Japanese war in 1931 until the formal end of the Pacific War with the San Francisco Peace Treaty in 1951, the researchers selected eight historical issues for translation.

These included the Japanese capture and occupation of Nanjing, China in 1937 and the atomic bombing of Japan in 1945.

Researchers included the US in the textbook study because of its participation in the Pacific War, as well as its role in shaping post-war dynamics in the region.

Looking at the translated textbook excerpts side by side would allow people to compare how historical memory is shaped in the different school systems for the first time, said Mr. Sneider.

The team then brought together historians and textbook writers, including those from Japan and China, in a conference in February last year to analyse the treatment of history in thetextbooks, and their impact on regional relations.

The experts found that the region's history texts were far from objective.

"Textbooks have been written specifically to promote a sense of national identity, and the politics of nationalism invariably affects their writing," wrote Professor Shin.

Both Taiwan and mainland China textbooks, for example, play up the victory over colonialism and imperialism. But while "both agree the defeat of the Japanese army ended a century of humiliation and established China as an international power, the path to victory is described differently and so is the outcome," Professor Duus commented.

The deepest disagreements between the mainland and Taiwanese textbooks are about the nature and effectiveness of Chinese resistance to the Japanese. The Chinese texts played down the role of the Kuomintang, while the Taiwanese texts make scant mention of the Chinese Communist Party's guerilla bases.

Compared with the Taiwanese textbooks, the Chinese texts dwelled on the brutality of the Japanese military in more graphic detail.

American textbooks, in general, were better than the Asian textbooks at encouraging critical thought. "You have a debate over the decision to drop the atomic bomb on Japan, or discussions of the events that led to Pearl Harbour, for example," Mr Sneider noted.

In contrast with Chinese and US textbooks, the tone in Japanese textbooks is "muted, neutral, bland", Prof Duus wrote. While they make no effort to conceal the brutality of Japanese forces towards occupied peoples, they do not give students much of an analytical construct to understand events, observed Mr. Sneider.

What the study made obvious was that the problem was not just with the Japanese historytextbooks, even though they have received most of the criticism. Experts point out that the textbooks which whitewashed wartime abuses are used in less than 2 per cent of Japanese schools.

"This is a problem for everybody," said Mr Sneider. "We are all participants in creating a divided, and to some degree, implicitly distorted understanding of the past."

The edited volume on the textbook study - which includes discussions from the February 2008 conference, and translated textbook excerpts - will be out next year. A teaching supplement based on the textbook study has been prepared for use by high school teachers in the US.

Mr Sneider said researchers hoped their work would show that "we need to take a dispassionate, comparative approach to history that recognises there is no single historical truth that everybody has to subscribe to".

He added: "There is room for discussion which can hopefully lead to reconciliation."

In December 2009, the Asia Health Policy Program celebrates the first anniversary of the launch of the AHPP working paper series on health and demographic change in the Asia-Pacific. The series showcases research by AHPP’s own affiliated faculty, postdoctoral fellows, and visiting scholars, as well as selected works by other scholars from the region.

To date AHPP has released eleven research papers in the series, by authors from China, South Korea, Thailand, Taiwan, Pakistan, and the US, with more on the way from Japan and Vietnam. Topics range from “The Effect of Informal Caregiving on Labor Market Outcomes in South Korea” and “Comparing Public and Private Hospitals in China,” to “Pandemic Influenza and the Globalization of Public Health.”  The working papers are available at the Asia Health Policy website.

AHPP considers quality research papers from leading research universities and think tanks across the Asia-Pacific region for inclusion in the working paper series. If interested, please contact Karen Eggleston.