Shinzo Abe's men can heal rift with China
Newly re-elected LDP has good channels of communication with Beijing, and should be able to bring relations back from the brink
Relations between Japan and China may be perilously low, but a new government in Tokyo - ironically, a right-of-centre administration - heralds hope that differences might be patched up, and sooner rather than later.
The Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) government, ousted in December, was hampered by relative inexperience in dealing with China and a lack of direct contact with its counterparts in Beijing, analysts in Japan say. But that has been rectified with the return of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Liberal Democratic Party.
"My own sources are telling me that there were insufficient lines of communication between the two governments when the row over the Senkaku [or Diaoyu] Islands first came up. The foreign ministry here in Japan got the false impression that the purchase of the islands would be sufficient to calm the waters," said Jun Okumura, an analyst with the Eurasia Group, referring to Tokyo's decision last year to buy from a Japanese family the disputed islands that are at the heart of Sino-Japanese difficulties.
"That very quickly became a diplomatic disaster and everyone was suddenly basically covering their behinds," he added.
With the DPJ out of office, the LDP is now able to take advantage of normalisation treaties signed in the 1970s by the predecessors of the present party and its counterparts in Beijing.
"The LDP has a far better relationship with China than the last government and it has already sent [Natsuo] Yamaguchi, the head of its ally, New Komeito, to Beijing for talks," Okumura said. Masahiko Komura, vice-president of the LDP and an advocate of closer ties with China, will visit Beijing next month.
"It is very important that we show China that Japan is not all about Shintaro Ishihara and the right-wing," he added, referring to the firebrand former governor of Tokyo.