Ready to get along? Japanese defence minister's visit to South Korea indicates slight thaw in relations between key US allies
Broader geopolitical forces may force two nations to reopen dialogue but mutual distrust remains.
When Gen Nakatani arrives in Seoul on Tuesday he'll be the first Japanese defence minister to visit South Korea in nearly five years, signalling that growing regional security risks are trumping the disputes over territory and history that have blighted relations between the countries.
Nakatani's trip comes days after South Korean President Park Geun-hye said she was willing to hold her first bilateral meeting with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. Park will host the Japanese leader in two weeks for the resumption of annual trilateral summits with China and South Korea that ground to a halt in 2012 when relations soured.
Any sign of easing tensions between Japan and South Korea will be welcomed by the US, whose efforts to balance out China's growing assertiveness in the region and deter threats from a nuclear North Korea have been hampered by animosity between its two main East Asian allies. The flurry of diplomatic activity comes 18 months after US President Barack Obama sought to nudge Park and Abe toward a rapprochement by inviting them to trilateral talks in the Hague.
Park's willingness to meet Abe signals a new desire to separate the issue of regional security from the territorial and historical problems that have soured the countries' ties under the two leaders, according to Brad Glosserman, executive director of Pacific Forum CSIS in Hawaii. Any bilateral summit would nonetheless probably be chilly, he said.
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"We may well be seeing the floor to the relationship and a modest rebound," he said. "It is unlikely there will be any significant shift with these two leaders."
The urgency of mending ties has increased as North Korea continues to expand its nuclear arsenal and the range of its ballistic missiles, which can reach Seoul and Tokyo as well as the West Coast of the United States. The Kim Jong-un regime said last month it was willing to use nuclear weapons to attack its enemies at any point and confirmed that its main nuclear facility was operational, producing the atomic material needed to fuel new weapons.