With Japan hosting the Group of Seven summit last month, and China set to chair the Group of 20 summit in September, these will be U.S. President Barack Obama's final visits to the two countries during his eight-year presidency. These visits will also be a test of how in sync the policies of the United States and Japan toward China really are.
In the early days of the Obama administration, the U.S. adopted a policy of accommodation and "strategic reassurance" toward China, revealing a clear gap between the China policies of Washington and Tokyo. This policy gap is now a thing of the past: the U.S. has switched to a policy of "rebalancing" in response to China's aggressive efforts to challenge the status quo in the South China Sea. In the past two years of this new period, Japan and the U.S. have also cooperated closely regarding the defense of the disputed Senkaku Islands.
Notwithstanding these developments, beneath the surface one can still detect a gap between the American and Japanese perceptions of, and approach to, China. Namely: