According to the English language Japanese Kyodo News, outgoing Japanese PM Abe praised US-Japan relations as the ‘strongest they have ever been’.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe explained his decision to resign in separate calls with U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, while also touching on a number of issues involving the countries that remain unresolved.
During his 30-minute phone talks with Trump, Abe thanked him for helping to make the Japan-U.S. relationship “the strongest it has ever been,” the Japanese government said.
In a following teleconference, Abe and Putin reaffirmed their countries’ commitment to continuing bilateral negotiations toward signing a postwar peace treaty, which has been hampered by a decades-old territorial row over Russian-held islands off Hokkaido.
Abe and Trump discussed North Korea’s abduction of Japanese nationals in the 1970s and 1980s, the ongoing coronavirus pandemic and Japan’s plans to renew its missile defense strategy, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga said at a press conference.
Trump tweeted after the call that Abe is a “special man” who will “soon be recognized as the greatest Prime Minister in the history of Japan, whose relationship with the USA is the best it has ever been.” (source)
Abe is correct, for it is the US who is helping Japan return to her militaristic past. Relations will continue to be strong to- until they are not once Japan becomes very powerful.
Japan right now is returning quickly to her old ways.
At the same time, one should note that Abe and Putin also spoke and promised to continue working towards peace, which is another interesting move because of the Russian history with Japan.
It is a known fact that following the Russo-Japanese war, Japanese troops remained stationed in Siberia as far as Novosibirsk until 1920. During World War II, Japan planned for another failed invasion and occupation of Siberia called Kantokuen. Just as it was not the Americans who dealt the final blow to National Socialist Germany but it was the USSR at the Battle of Stalingrad that cut off German access to Volga basin oil in 1942, it must be said that the USSR was not saved by her own glory, but because of the Americans and Japanese arrogance, for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 justified the American entrance into World War II, and part of this was an immediate cutoff of oil to Japan as well as forcing total and unrestrained US military action against Japan.
Because the Americans were attacking Japan and with no oil, Japan was forced to maintain what she had taken in China as well as to change her plans to “instead “go south” into the islands of the Pacific and into parts southeast Asia for oil. In fact, because of this, one might argue that Germany lost in World War II not because of the USSR, but because of Japanese arrogance and the American war against Japan, for if Japan was able to follow through with Kantokuen, Russia would have been forced to divide her forces and would likely lack the manpower and firepower to defeat Germany. Indeed, the victory at Volgograd was barely a victory, as the entire city was destroyed, all her population scattered or killed, and over a million Russian soldiers needlessly sent to their deaths, and the only reason why the Germans were defeated was not because of some superior Soviet military tactics, but because of the winter.
Germany lost World War II because of two miracles- the Japanese action against the Americans, and the cold winter. Were it not for both of these things in this particular order, Russia would likely be split between two nations- one speaking German in the West, and one speaking Japanese in the East.
This history is relevant today because in spite of propaganda and Andropovesque claims attacking the credibility and mental state of those who criticize the state or Russian national health, the nation is in worse shape than during the Soviet years leading up to World War II, and is not improving. Indeed, if Japan was to hold off military action against Russia but follow through with a Kantokuen type plan, especially with American support, and lacking a Molotov-Ribbentrop type agreement- assuming that Germany will actually keep her promises for a historical change -then Russia is in serious trouble because she will be divided against herself and ripped apart. Her only hope theoretically would be what she is doing now- to go north into the Arctic cold and hope to use it as a weapon to buy time. And there is a reason why the Americans have been conducting non-stop war games in the northermost parts of Norway, Finland, northeastern Poland, the Baltic nations, and in the regions around Svalbard.
There are a lot of things happening in Japan right now, and they really are not about Japan, but Russia, and it does not, from a strict number viewpoint, look good for her future.