Japanese and US have difficulty negotiating SOFA: feng shui to blame?

The US and Poland agreed rather quickly on their status of forces agreement. Revising the one with Japan's ruling DPJ is proving tougher.

After three months in office, the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) is close to bringing to an end one of the most controversial episodes of its early days in power when Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama looks to give details of a concrete proposal to President Barack Obama on a way to mend a rift over the future of U.S. troops based in Futenma, Okinawa Prefecture.

Since winning an election in August, the DPJ has said it would like to review the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA) signed by the former governing Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and administration of George W. Bush in 2006.

Under the agreement, the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station Futenma would be relocated from the center of the city of Ginowan to a less densely populated area of the prefecture, and 8,000 troops currently located there would be moved out of Japan to facilities in Guam. The U.S. has demanded a concrete proposal on the issue by Friday.

In pushing for changing the agreement, the DPJ has at times seemed to be a party of contradictions without a unified goal or purpose, which has led to intense media scrutiny, anger in Okinawa Prefecture, and criticism from both U.S. and Japanese politicians.

Looking to make changes to the current SOFA agreement, the DPJ has pushed for high-level negotiations with the United States, and in the process received criticism for its handling of the affair. In an editorial on Thursday, the conservative Sankei Shinbun newspaper said that by prioritising national politics, the Hatoyama government has 'created a loss of confidence in its ability to handle international affairs.'

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