Japan and the United States have reached an agreement to freeze the amount Tokyo pays to host American forces at the current level for the 2021 financial year, with analysts suggesting both sides were keen to conclude a deal swiftly and move on from the problems that had dogged the previous US administration’s relationships with its ally. Under the agreement, Tokyo will pay 201.7 billion yen (US$1.9 billion) in so-called host-nation support for the 12-month period that starts in April. The funds will cover most of the costs for the 55,000 US troops currently stationed in Japan. Japanese foreign minister Toshimitsu Motegi and defence minister Nobuo Kishi welcomed the deal in a joint statement. “We were able to reach an agreement at an early time following the inauguration of President Joe Biden ,” Motegi told local media in Tokyo on Wednesday. “This shows the two countries’ strong commitment to the bond of the Japan-US alliance and enhances the credibility of the alliance.” He added that the new deal – which extends the current five-year agreement by 12 months – also saw the two governments agree to hold more substantive talks on a longer-term pact to cover future cost sharing. Japan’s ground troops to get transport ships amid concerns over China’s military build-up in Indo-Pacific Analysts told This Week in Asia Tokyo would be relieved at the speed at which the agreement was reached and that its financial burden had not increased. “President [Donald] Trump was demanding that Japan quadruple its host-nation support, which was simply unreasonable because Tokyo is already paying 75 per cent of the direct costs of the bases,” said Tomohito Shinoda, a professor at the International University of Japan. The figure Trump was proposing was only mentioned in working-level discussions and was never a formal demand of Tokyo, Shinoda said, although it was another example of the former president’s “transactional approach” to international relations. “He wanted a deal that he could point to as a win for the US and for him,” the professor said. “But that’s not what a security alliance is about. It’s not about beating an ally.” The agreement was reached within six weeks of Biden’s inauguration and gave the Japanese government time to approve the deal before the end of the financial year, allowing a seamless continuation of the security pact, Shinoda said. Diplomatic sources have indicated that Washington is close to a similar agreement with the government of South Korea , another key security ally in the region, to cover the 28,500 US troops stationed on the peninsula. Seoul’s discussions on the funding of troops with the Trump administration were even more troubled, with the former president in 2019 demanding that South Korea pay US$5 billion a year in host-nation support. Until that year Seoul had been paying US$870 million a year and had proposed a 13 per cent increase on that figure for subsequent years, putting the two sides at an impasse. The US later reduced its demand to US$1.3 billion a year, but that figure was still too high for the South Korean government, which looks to have stalled the negotiations last year in the hope that a change in administration would help solve the problem. That appears to be the case, although the exact details of the new deal have yet to be announced. US and Japan agree to extend troops deal, Blinken concerned by China’s conduct in disputed waters Robert Dujarric, co-director of the Institute of Contemporary Asian Studies at the Tokyo campus of Temple University, said the Biden administration was keen to get the deal over the line as quickly as possible. “This is a new government and they have a whole range of issues that they need to deal with after the previous administration, so I would think that they would have been very happy to sign a one-year extension to give both sides some breathing space,” he said. “This allows them to go back and start new negotiations on how to progress from here.” The announcement of the deal comes before US Secretary of State Antony Blinken hosts a virtual meeting with the leaders of the Quad on Thursday. The meeting of the security alliance – composed of Japan, India, Australia and the US – will be the first since Biden took office on January 20 and is likely to reiterate the importance of the Quad to counter China’s growing military and economic power in the Indo-Pacific region.