If Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori's overseas foreign-policy tour this week has a theme, it is "coverup" and "damage control." Mori, known as a colorless political fixer, has been tasked with assuring foreign leaders that the July G8 summit will go forward successfully no matter what happens on the Japanese political scene. U.S. President Bill Clinton and other leaders of course would like to hear more from Tokyo, but this is about all they are likely to get.

Despite the photos in the Japanese press showing Mori posing and smiling with other G8 leaders, everyone knows that the new prime minister has little personal interest in global affairs and no significant foreign-policy experience. Mori has climbed to where he is by being a consensus builder and behind-the-scenes Liberal Democratic Party apparatchik. To do this, he has always taken short cuts: He was implicated in insider trading in the 1988 Recruit scandal, is short-tempered, and has a tendency to make flip remarks that get him into hot water.

Now, as one of a new generation of "shadow shoguns" in Japanese politics, deal-maker Mori has no qualms about going abroad to tone down foreign demands for greater deregulation and easier access to Japan's markets. He and his inner circle of political operatives have no interest in opening up Japan to the Americans or anyone else. Indeed, given his troubles at home, this presummit damage-control strategy might be Mori's only option if he wants to raise his sagging showing in opinion polls.