UpdateObama touches down in Japan for first leg of tension-filled Asian tour

US President Barack Obama landed in Tokyo on Wednesday to launch an Asian tour dedicated to reinvigorating his policy of “rebalancing” US foreign policy towards a dynamic Asia.

Obama landed aboard Air Force One to begin a state visit to Japan, which comes as regional tensions boil over maritime territorial disputes and fears that North Korea could soon carry out a new nuclear test.

The president touched down a day after nearly 150 lawmakers paid homage at a controversial Tokyo war shrine seen by neighbouring nations as a symbol of Japan’s brutal imperialist past, and shortly after the prime minister made a shrine offering.

Days earlier, China seized a huge Japanese freighter over what a Shanghai court says are unpaid bills relating to Japan’s 1930s occupation of vast swathes of the country.

In the seas to the southwest, boats from China and Japan spar for ownership of a small chain of islands. And 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.

Despite the increasingly tense security situation, getting top regional US allies Japan and South Korea – Obama’s next destination – to talk to each other is tricky.