2010 was a tough year in foreign relations for Prime Minister Naoto Kan and the Democratic Party of Japan as they scrambled to deal with one problem after another, including territorial disputes with China and Russia.
But according to Hitoshi Tanaka, newly appointed chairman of the Institute for International Strategy, the timing was no coincidence — other countries seized the opportunity to take a jab at Japan's diplomatically weakening state.
Political leadership has been at the top of the DPJ's to-do list since it knocked the Liberal Democratic Party off the throne in September 2009. The DPJ had been extremely critical of traditional bureaucracy-oriented policymaking, and when it took power it vowed to reform the system to make sure the politicians were in charge.