Japan's newly minted prime minister steps into UN limelight
TOKYO (AP) — Considered something of a lightweight on foreign policy issues, Japan’s new prime minister has spent much of his career in the shadows, supporting previous leader Shinzo Abe with backroom bureaucratic maneuvers and in largely scripted, sometimes prickly dealings with the media.
That will change Saturday when Yoshihide Suga makes his very public debut, albeit virtually, at the U.N. General Assembly, the world’s premier international gathering of leaders.
Don’t expect the earth to shake, though, with resounding rhetoric or wildly innovative ideas to improve Japan's rocky ties with the nations it terrorized in WWII or its decades-long economic malaise.
Much as he’s done domestically in the week and a half that he’s been prime minister, Suga is eager to emphasize that he’ll continue the foreign policy efforts Abe championed in his nearly eight-year rule, the longest of any Japanese prime minister.
Continuity won’t necessarily thrill Japan’s Asian neighbors. Many have been hoping that Suga will distance himself from the hawkish Abe, who regularly questioned the narrative of Japan as a war criminal.
Suga’s cautious approach is largely due to his lack of experience on the world stage, in part because his job as chief cabinet secretary required him to manage disasters and other crises at home. But it also may be linked to his temperament.
“He is not a visionary,” according to Jeff Kingston, director of Asian studies at Temple University Japan. He is “a capable lieutenant who will follow Abe’s foreign policy.”
Because of the constraints on travel and face-to-face contact caused by the coronavirus pandemic, Suga also won’t be able to pursue the personal diplomacy that Abe favored and “will muddle along rather than breaking any new...