U.S. Still Global Leader, Japan Prime Minister Says

Despite Japan’s emerging economic power and its recent attainment of “equal footing” in a once-subservient relationship with the United States, America remains No. 1 where global leadership is concerned, Japanese Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu said Wednesday.

“No country can replace the United States in its position and role as leader of the Free World,” Kaifu told the Japan Society of Northern California.

“We expect that the United States can respond to various problems with confidence, and at the same time Japan will do its utmost to continue cooperating with and supporting American leadership.”

Kaifu arrived here earlier in the day on the first stop of a 10-day tour of the United States, Mexico and Canada. Japanese officials have said the visit is aimed primarily at evoking positive feelings among the American public and at reassuring the U.S. government that Japan’s basic economic and foreign policies will remain unchanged amid a climate of domestic political instability.

Kaifu, whose administration is only three weeks old, is a member of a minor faction of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, and his tenure is considered uncertain at best. In the past three months his two predecessors were forced to resign as the result of bribery and sex scandals, and pressure is mounting on Kaifu from party elders who would like to see him dissolve the lower house of Parliament and call a general election this fall--a move that could hasten his downfall.

Few surprises are expected at Kaifu’s scheduled meeting with President Bush in Washington on Friday, but Japanese officials said they expect the prime minister’s skills as a communicator to help defuse rising bilateral tension.

In Wednesday’s remarks to an audience of about 1,000, Kaifu emphasized that ties between Japan and America are changing dramatically but remain fundamentally sound.

‘Association of Partners’

The bilateral relationship “is no longer the protector-protected, teacher-pupil bond it once was,” he said. “Especially in its economic aspects, this bond is increasingly becoming an association of partners cooperating and occasionally competing on an equal footing.”

Japan overtook the United States as the largest donor of foreign aid last year after a booming global trade surplus propelled it into the status of the world’s largest creditor nation, with massive investments in the United States and corresponding power in the international financial arena.

Yet, Kaifu said, there has been too much emphasis on the negative aspects of the changing economic relationship.

“We must avoid failing to see the forest for the trees,” he said. “We risk being unable to see the comprehensive structure of our sound U.S.-Japan relationship if we peer at it through glasses that permit us to focus only on such recently played-up controversies as U.S. trade with Japan or Japanese investment in the United States.”

Emphasizing the importance of the close military alliance between the two countries, Kaifu noted that it was in San Francisco that Japan signed the formal World War II peace treaty and also committed itself to a security pact with the United States.

“Japan has chosen to seek its national survival and development through close cooperation with the United States,” he said. “San Francisco is where Japan decided the course of its postwar history. And I believe it was here that we made the right choice.”

Growing interdependence in the U.S.-Japan relationship has meant that “friction has occasionally arisen between us,” he said. “One even gets the impression that we are criticizing each other in ever louder voices. To be frank, this is not a good development, but in a sense we might call it a natural one.”