http://www.bunshun.co.jp/mag/shukanbunshun/index.htm Reporters at the weekly Shukan Bunshun news magazine here in Tokyo, Japan have written a rather caustic report about President Obama's 23 hours in Tokyo last week, from a frank Japanese perspective, exclusively in the Japanese language, and released to the newstands just now. In that sense this is more or less an *FR Exclusive*. A number of eye-opening claims, pieces of information and details emerge about Obama's brief stay in Japan as part of his disastrous Asian trip--over and above the very controversial, near-"dogeza" bow delivered as a Head of State of a superpower to the Emperor of Japan. There is criticism in this article for both the Obama Administration and their behavior, as well as within the Japanese government either in response or through their own incompetence. Either way, it does not make for a very pretty picture and is squarely at odds with the Administration which announced upon arrival in the US that the Asian trip was a "success". By what benchmark? This Japanese magazine is a major weekly publication in Japan. I have as a courtesy provided a synopsis English translation, not word-for-word, of the main gist of the article. As always, the original Japanese authors' Japanese language version of the article prevails over the English. For general discussion, research and historical purposes. --"To tell you the truth, it had to have been the worst US-Japan Summit Meeting in history," a source of ours at the Foreign Ministry revealed to us. --For the first time since he was inaugurated as President of the USA in January, Obama had visited Japan for the first time on January 13th, and conducted a summit meeting with the Prime Minister, Yukio Hatayama. After their meeting, the two leaders conducted a press briefing. "We had a very deep, discreet discussion, and we even reached the point of being able to call each other 'Yukio' and 'Barack' ", the Prime Minister stated afterwards. --Or so he accentuated the positive results of such a meeting with Obama. But the internal fact of the matter is, the US-Japan Summit Meeting was MISERABLE. (ŽSÅéâ½âéâà âÃ) Indications that it would be chaotic were picked up in advance, even before President Obama arrived in Japan. "Even within the Japanese government there was and is still no agreement among the Japanese Cabinet Ministers on what to do about the Futenma USMC station in Okinawa situation (moving it to an offshore location or elsewhere), and for that reason the decision was being put in a holding pattern because of it, the US peppered their disbelief at Japan, stating "we don't know just who is saying what and if it is true on your side, the decision is taking too long." And that is when the U.S. side sent their anger to Japan in message form by their highly unusual, sudden, last-minute change in the schedule of Obama to come to Japan, a US journalist source revealed. --The plan was for Obama to arrive in Japan on the November 12, have his summit meeting with Hatoyama on the 13th, and thereby jet out of Japan the following day, the 14th to Singapore for the APEC Summit meeting. The US journalist also revealed that the Obama administration made the sudden request to change this schedule for Obama to the 13th (arrival in Japan), on November 7. Said the same US journalist source, "their excuse for the delay was the shooting at Ft. Hood, Texas on the US Army base on November 5. But the fact of the matter is, the memoral service was on the November 10 and only took a day trip for Obama whereupon he returned immediately to Washington. After that, he had the National Security Council meeting on policy in Afghanistan on November 11th. However, he could have departed Washington D.C. right after that and could have still landed in Japan as everyone agreed and planned on, for the 12th." --Additional screw-ups that created a possible conflict with the Emperor's schedule and the entire Cabinet celebrating his 20 years on the throne, can be traced to the Japanese Foreign Ministry. A ruling Democratic Party of Japan spokesperson said "at any rate, with four days in China for Obama, the fact is China is the big thing for them." --Obama was made to wait five minutes in a car at the entrance way to the Prime Minister's Official Residence, which as seen as not only a diplomatic discourtesy, but a breach of security procedures, and furthermore it would be recalled the Prime Minister and his wife had kept Obama waiting for a long time in Pittsburg at the G-20 dinner as well, says foreign affairs specialist Oyama. --It may have been felt as a diplomatic slight to get back at the Americans because of the very sudden, troublesome last minute schedule change. --A DPJ ruling party official stated to Shukan Bunshun, that "in the Obama-Hatoyama summit itself, the Japanese side had a total of 14 officials, including six cabinet ministers, the Foreign Minister Okada, the Defense Minister Kitazawa, etc. but on the American side it was only "Team Obama" staff and hardly anybody else. There was agreement in advance that there would be no detailed discussion on any topics, and there was not even a dynamic give-and-take discussion in the meeting. It was to the point that even on the American side, there were those in the Obama delegation who were yawning and even some who were nodding off right there in the meeting." --Prime Minister Hatoyama essentially left Obama on Japanese soil while he went ahead of Obama to the Singapore summit of APEC, leaving on the November 14 even while Obama still had major events in Japan such as delivering a major live speech and visiting the Imperial Palace, so this to was seen perhaps as a message leaving ahead of him like that as a country's host, observed a reporter attached to the Prime Minister's beat. The reason to go to Singapore like that was to tape-cut the grand opening of a Japan information center, but in order to do that, cutting time to be spent with the President of the US on Japanese soil is rather unprecedented, journalist Michael Yu observed. --Before the US-Japan summit, the leader of the Socialist Party of Japan Ms. Fukushima, threatened that if the US Marines would move their base up to (the) Henoko offshore reef from the current Futenma location, then she would leave the Hatoyama coalition government. Well it seems Prime Minister Hatoyama is more afraid of Socialist Party leader Fukushima than he is President Obama of the USA, that is why he reversed himself on the committment about settling Futenma USMC Station issue so soon after meeting Obama. --A source in the US government stated "US-Japan relations are having a problem, but it is not a crisis." --However, it does seem a crisis is approaching as we speak.