Foreign affairs turned out to be the hot button for Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in his first six months in the job, as he dramatically changed course on Japan’s strategy for dealing with Russia.

This involved fending off resistance within his own party and paying his respects to former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. 

Kishida had to quickly shift from addressing one crisis at home--how to respond to yet another surge of the novel coronavirus--to another unfolding halfway around the world that would soon deal a major shake-up to international relations.

In a nod to that as he reflected on his first half year as prime minister on April 4, Kishida acknowledged the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been a major challenge.

“I have faced a host of challenges in the past six months that require my concentration all the time,” he told reporters at the prime minister’s office in Tokyo, adding that the war in Ukraine has forced him to “make one incredibly difficult decision after another.”

Those decisions--in particular, levying sanctions against Russian President Vladimir Putin--have been significant.

“It was a landmark political decision in the history of Japanese foreign diplomacy,” said a top official of the office of the prime minister.

The strong response marked a clear departure from a decade of Japan taking a conciliatory approach toward Russia and ruptured a relationship Abe had worked hard to build and maintain, according to experts and others.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24 shook the world, and the reaction from the United States and Europe was immediate, as they quickly announced a flurry of economic sanctions against Russian President Vladimir Putin and other key officials.

Imposing economic sanctions against a head of state was unprecedented.

When Russia invaded and annexed the Crimean Peninsula from Ukraine in 2014, Abe had decided to only impose loose sanctions against Russia, such as suspending talks over visa issues to avoid negatively affecting peace treaty negotiations between Abe and Putin at the time.

But this time was different. At the request of the United States and Europe, Japan quickly put together a policy to embargo and freeze the assets of high-ranking Russian officials in lockstep with the other Group of Seven nations.

PROTESTS AND RELUCTANCE

The decision to impose sanctions on Putin was on an entirely new level for Kishida, not only because of the ongoing issues over the disputed Northern Territories but also because he faced internal resistance. The islands off the coast of Hokkaido were seized by the Soviet Union at the end of World War II and claimed by Tokyo.

Some within the Foreign Ministry and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party had protested the move to impose sanctions on Putin.

Cabinet members and other high-ranking officials streamed into the Prime Minister’s Official Residence on the afternoon of Feb. 27 to discuss the matter.

The Foreign Ministry handed out background information to the attendees, papers that listed details of economic sanctions against Russia that G-7 members and other countries had already started imposing ahead of Japan.

Kishida had once served as a foreign minister under Abe. He and other foreign ministers since then had maintained a conciliatory approach toward Putin, hoping to win him over and make progress in negotiations over the Northern Territories.

A decision to impose sanctions against Putin would be “like cutting off all ties from the negotiations,” said a senior official of the prime minister’s office.

At the time, some reports suggested that Kyiv, the capital of Ukraine, could fall to Russia over the next few days.

Some LDP members had advised against the sanctions on Putin.

“When Russia wins the war, we will find ourselves in hell,” one member warned Kishida.

And the prime minister hesitated before reaching his decision.

If Russia quickly subdued Ukraine, Japan would then likely face a growing security threat from Russia, in addition to China and North Korea--countries that have built up their military forces.

But if Japan decided not to impose sanctions against Putin, it would provoke disapproval from the United States and Europe, which would also profoundly affect Japan’s security strategy going forward.

Kishida had held multiple talks with senior Foreign Ministry officials.

According to sources, he repeatedly told them, as if trying to convince himself, “This is about whether we prepare ourselves for the worst.”

COURTESY CALL TO ABE

“Japan will remain in step with the G-7 nations,” Kishida ultimately told the officials.

“Think about (what happens) if we do things halfway and how the (G-7 nations) would judge that. Considering that, we have no other choice,” Kishida said.

After Kishida settled on his decision, he called Abe’s cellphone to notify him as a courtesy.

Abe has boasted that his administration’s efforts in negotiating over the Northern Territories were like “a culmination of post-war Japanese diplomacy.”

Abe accepted Kishida’s decision, sources said.

The Feb. 27 meeting at the Prime Minister’s Official Residence proceeded in a matter-of-fact manner and ended in about an hour.

After the meeting ended, Kishida told reporters that Japan would impose additional sanctions against Russia, including freezing the assets of Putin and other officials.

“We are no longer able to maintain the same former relationship with Russia,” Kishida said.

Eight days after the Feb. 27 meeting, Russia declared that Japan has become an “unfriendly” country.

Russia officially suspended talks over the Northern Territories on March 21.

Meanwhile, in a poll conducted by The Asahi Shimbun on March 19 and 20, the Kishida administration’s approval rating was 50 percent--the highest since he became prime minister.

Fifty-two percent approved of Kishida’s handling of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, while 26 percent disapproved.

(This article was compiled from reports by Keishi Nishimura, Ryutaro Abe and Ryo Aibara.)