Globetrotting Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe seeks to outdo Chinese diplomacy

If it's Monday, it must be Trinidad and Tobago.

That's what Prime Minister Shinzo Abe could have said as he woke up in Port of Spain, the Caribbean country's capital. By this time next week Abe will have visited 47 nations since taking office in 2012, after an itinerary encompassing six Latin American and Caribbean cities in nine days.

Spanning the globe to sell the story that the nation marred by two decades of deflation and economic stagnation is now back on the upswing, Abe will become the most-travelled Japanese prime minister in history on a trip pencilled in for South Asia in the coming weeks.

The effort underscores his government's commitment to build international support as Japan wrangles with China over territorial disputes near home and seeks to counter its neighbour's growing global influence.

"He's inspired by how very active China has been in diversifying its diplomatic partners," said Kerry Brown, executive director of the China Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. "Japan's had too low a profile for too long, despite the fact that Japan is one of the world's major economies."

Abe said at a July 24 conference in Tokyo that "he has worked up a sweat" on his travels, as he touts the initial success of his economic policies and peddles everything from Japanese nuclear technology in Turkey to submarines in Australia. His salesmanship had led to a tripling of infrastructure orders in 2013 from the previous year, he said at the event.

"Japan's foreign policy was largely insolvent" before Abe came to power, said Tomohiko Taniguchi, a former journalist whom Abe tapped as a special adviser on strategic communication. "Abe is trying to show the rest of the world that Japan is still here and remains a power that you can count on."