What happens when militaristic shouts of “USA USA”, are combined with a blatant display of Trumpian boasting in an ersatz Japanese imitation of a 19th century German neo-baroque castle plonked down in a quiet Tokyo suburb?

A mess, you might say. The shouts were directed to Japan’s first female prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, visiting a US warship permanently based near Tokyo. Throw in a collection of seemingly grief-stricken Japanese in Tokyo’s Akasaka Palace begging Trump to rescue relatives in North Korea and a prime minister of one week promising greatly to increase military spending and you would understand the circus we have been witnessing in Japan these past two days.

It began with the usual Trump threats of tariffs and demands for investment to spur a US economy weakened by forever wars and weak education. Japan bowed politely when the tariff was reduced from 25% to 15% and the investment demands from US$550 billion to US$498 billion, restored to almost US$550 billion when the usually conservative Toyota came up with an offer to build five vehicle factories.

From there we were taken to a room filled with the grief-stricken clutching photos of relatives allegedly abducted by North Korea and whom Trump had promised to rescue. I say allegedly because I know almost for certain that the performance was faked. Pyongyang did abduct people from various parts of the world during its fits of 1970s madness.

But a Tokyo diplomat, Tanaka Hitoshi, an acquaintance, spent a year secretly visiting North Korea negotiating to get them — all five — released. To celebrate the release, Tokyo drafted the Pyongyang Declaration of 2002, promising economic aid and good relations for North Korea in exchange for a pause in rocket launches. The Japanese prime minister, Junichiro Koizumi, travelled to Pyongyang to sign the document and then to escort the abducted five back to Japan.

But Koizumi was followed by arch-hawk Shinzo Abe. Appalled by the prospect of better relations with North Korea, he said he knew of dozens of people, hundreds even, still being held. So the declaration was allowed to wither and the 28 million people of North Korea allowed to lapse back to semi-serfdom, while Tokyo indulged in furious propaganda about a schoolgirl, Megumi Yokota, tragically abducted in 1977, as being representative of all the other abductees still allegedly being held. Megumi’s mother was among those introduced to Trump.

In 2022, I happened to meet that mother and asked about her daughter. She basically admitted that reports of Megumi’s death in North Korea two decades earlier were cruelly true.

Meanwhile, Abe Shinzo has come to be seen as a symbol of Japan’s turn to positive diplomacy. And Japan’s new prime minister is proud to be a follower of his right-wing policies.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.