Japan believes that those parameters are changing and, more important in Tokyo's eyes, it is seen as a nation that is still rising with an expanding population that will overtake that of China after 2030. But, perhaps equally an important feature, with such a healthy population increase that its dependency ratio — the ratio of pensioners to young earners — will continue to decline up until at least 2040.

Such a favourable ratio is now becoming rare among developed countries and Japan's policy makers consider it a sign of a society that is going to continue to enjoy a vibrant economy unburdened by excessive social costs.
Japanese corporations are already moving to invest not only in the Indian service sector but in manufacturing as well and that trend will continue to boost the relatively modest annual two-way trade of $8.5 billion, which contrasts with Japan's annual trade with China of $200 billion.

The Japanese side is also keen to expand the defence relationship with a particular emphasis on sea lanes.
Following a major multilateral naval exercise, Malabar 2007, involving the Americans, Singaporeans and Australians, apart from Indians and Japanese, the outlines of the two countries' mutual interest in the defence and safety of the sea lanes has become more clearly defined.

Both are heavily dependent on Gulf oil supplies traversing the Indian Ocean and have a requirement to keep those supply lanes free of interference. They are also both interested in anti-piracy operations. The Japanese side is already involved with the stationing of Lockheed P3 Orions in the Gulf of Aden, the maintenance of safe naval supply lines to the multilateral operations in Afghanistan and the unspoken fear of an increased 'blue water' presence of the Chinese Navy in the region.

The Indian Defence Minister A. K. Antony visited Tokyo last month to negotiate some of the finer points of the new arrangements and no doubt the Japanese leader Yukio Hatoyama will emphasise its importance when he visits Delhi at the end of December for one of his first foreign trips since taking office.  That visit follows on the first of a new series of bilateral meetings between the two countries held in the middle of November. That bilateral will be followed by the first of a new format of international gathering — a trilateral meeting between the U.S., India and Japan.
That will be the new format for Japanese diplomacy in the coming years which will govern meetings with all Tokyo's Asian neighbours. This format can be explained in two ways — paradoxically.

The first is that the Japanese are now keen to emphasise that the United   States needs greater assistance than in the past with its world role and   therefore Japan should be at its elbow whenever possible while, secondly, also claiming that it intends to pursue a more independent foreign policy of its own.

Both elements of the argument are true. Japan sees the United States as the only superpower for the foreseeable future and, more important, the only major nation with an expanding population that will not suffer from the burden of a rapidly aging population. But at the same time 'Atlas' will need some help in holding up the earth with the subtext that China will be a handful for both of them over the coming decades.

The U.S. is telling its closest Asian ally that it wants to switch from the 'hub and spoke' diplomatic system with Washington always at the centre. It will expect its allies to take care of more of their own business.

But the new relationship with Washington will prompt Tokyo to begin to ask a lot of questions of its benefactor that it has never asked before. And some of them beg more questions than they answer. According to an interlocutor of Asian Affairs, one of the first will be how does nuclear deterrence work? Bearing in mind Japan's historical allergy to all things nuclear, there is really only one way that can be read and that is that Tokyo is preparing for the day when it may need to deploy nuclear weapons in its defence. Those discussions will start next year so perhaps that day will come sooner than anyone thinks.

Tokyo is also in the process of getting its public and politicians to acknowledge that such an important ally must expect that one day it will have to come to the military aid of its 'bigger brother'. And not just in a peacekeeping role. There are no prizes for guessing which country is likely to trigger such a requirement — North Korea.
The Japanese government is acutely aware that at that point there could be a serious breach or even rupture of the defence relationship if Tokyo does not respond in a way that Washington expects.

So far, North Korean missiles have lobbed over Japan or fallen harmlessly in the ocean. What if one hit a major Japanese city or a military base? The Japanese armed forces are in an extremely ambiguous position. At present they would need high level political approval to respond.

. top