Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe won a great election victory, enabling him to push through his agenda. But this victory will prove hollow if he doesn’t favor cooperation over cut-throat competition.

Prime Minister Abe has taken merely the first step in a potentially long reconciliation process. However, both countries should put the indefensible past behind them. Making Asia more stable and peaceful would benefit America as well. Both China and Japan should recognize that shared interests in the future are more important than bitter antagonisms of the past.

Prime Minister Abe has taken merely the first step in a potentially long reconciliation process. However, both countries should put the indefensible past behind them. Making Asia more stable and peaceful would benefit America as well. Both China and Japan should recognize that shared interests in the future are more important than bitter antagonisms of the past.

Whereas nationalism in China was fused with “bottom-up” revolutions and thus had an inherent obligation to change existing conditions, nationalism in Japan, aligned with “top-down” restorations and later imperialism, was more a direct force of anti-revolutionary oppression with the obligation to preserve the status quo. Given that Japan’s nationalism is divorced from popular spontaneity and mass support, fears about “resurging Japanese nationalism”, albeit understandable, are probably misplaced.

Whereas nationalism in China was fused with “bottom-up” revolutions and thus had an inherent obligation to change existing conditions, nationalism in Japan, aligned with “top-down” restorations and later imperialism, was more a direct force of anti-revolutionary oppression with the obligation to preserve the status quo. Given that Japan’s nationalism is divorced from popular spontaneity and mass support, fears about “resurging Japanese nationalism”, albeit understandable, are probably misplaced.

When Abe tries to contain China to relive the dream of the “great Japanese empire”, he is running against the times. Peace, development and win-win cooperation are now the themes in East Asia and the world as a whole.

China is not the only Asian country looking to the ancient Silk Road as a path to greater economic and political influence. Both Japan and South Korea have their own, albeit more modest, versions of Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative. While Seoul and Beijing have expressed public interest in collaborating along the Silk Road, Tokyo remains silent. Will the BRI be a driver for greater integration in Northeast Asia, or will these three nations prefer to follow their own paths eastward?

The “Duterte phenomenon” must have prompted much reflection in Washington, and so it should in Tokyo. It may serve Japan better to think twice about the merits of its subordinate relationship with the US.

China’s ties with the two US allies continue to evolve, as Beijing develops new consensus with Seoul but finds accommodation with Tokyo more challenging. Domestic politics in the US and Japan may cast a shadow on future progress in China’s bilateral relations with both South Korea and Japan.

Four years after they went into a nose dive, tense relations between China and Japan may finally be headed for a return to some semblance of normalcy.