LONDON -- Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi cannot afford to let Japanese foreign policy become a hostage to nationalist agitation and populist pressures. Japan needs friends in Asia as well as in the rest of the world. Its relationship with the United States remains crucial. Koizumi has worked hard to develop good personal relations with U.S. President George W. Bush, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other Western leaders, but good personal relations, important though they are, are no substitute for careful attention to the nitty-gritty of foreign policy issues.

Japanese Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka is popular with the Japanese electorate because she speaks her mind and seems determined to face down the unpopular bureaucracy. But she seems to many foreign observers to have failed to a significant degree in her handling of foreigners and of Japan's current foreign policy concerns.

Britain has had its share of politicians, including former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who loathed the foreign office because they wrongly thought it weak in standing up for British interests. We have also had foreign secretaries, like the arrogant David Owen, who thought that they knew all the answers and that officials were either fools or knaves. Politicians come and go but the country's interests still have to be protected and promoted by the vilified officials. Tanaka would be wise to remember that, if your officials have no confidence in you and you treat them with contempt, their morale suffers, and that if the government ignores the advice of the experts, relations with foreign countries will deteriorate.