Tokyo's never-ending capacity for emotional overreaction, irrational group-think and back-to-front foreign policies has reached new heights over North Korea. Somehow Pyongyang's remarkable willingness to admit and apologize for former abductions of Japanese citizens has been turned around 180 degrees to become a blunt instrument for demonizing that regime.
Meanwhile, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's September 2002 breakthrough in relations with North Korea has been hijacked by the rightwing here and turned into a reason for not having a breakthrough.
The long journey into deep irrationality began with the question of whether the North Korean children of the former abductees should be allowed to go to Japan. North Korea has repeated its earlier promise to let the parents or grandparents visit Pyongyang to talk to the children and try to persuade them to go. But Tokyo refuses to allow such visits, despite its earlier promise to the contrary in the September 2002 agreements with North Korea for normalizing relations.