Japan seems bound forever to want to embark on quixotic foreign-policy campaigns. Yesterday it was Tokyo's bizarre Northern Territories demands against Moscow. Today it is its equally bizarre abductee demands against Pyongyang.
Once again Tokyo has resolved to be nebarizuyoi -- relentless and persistent in seeking to reach its goals. Once again it is trying to recruit the rest of the world to support its strange objectives. And once again it seems doomed to do little more than create a fruitless deadlock in relations with an neighboring country.
Much of the blame falls on the way Japan's hardliners seem able so easily to hijack foreign-policy issues. In 1945, Moscow seized the Japanese-occupied Kuril islands to the northeast of Hokkaido. Its behavior was not entirely evil since it once owned most of the islands anyway, and had U.S. wartime approval to seize the rest.