Brexit tests Japan’s globalist credentials 

Even so, Japan – a fellow island country which formed an alliance with Britain in the early years of the last century – is nervously watching the roller-coaster Brexit ride, and not just for its short-term economic interests. 
Japan is worried that its strategic and even ideological interests may be at stake if Britain recedes from the world as a result of European Union withdrawal.
Britain as diplomatic backstop 
The United States has dominated post-World War II Japan’s security and economic dimensions as its closest ally. But for Tokyo, London is a key barometer to conducting sensible diplomacy.
“We see Britain as a reference to base our voting on UN resolutions on Middle East issues,” a senior Japanese diplomat once said. 
Out of at least 28 Palestine-related resolutions adopted with votes at the UN General Assembly in 2015-17, Japan and Britain were on the same side, while the United States voted differently on all of them.
Dependent on oil from Arab countries, Japan is keen on economic assistance to the region and keeps similar principles to many other countries in calling for a two-state solution based on the 1967 lines and resolving Jerusalem’s final status through negotiations. 
Yet on Middle East issues, Tokyo is in a difficult position as it tries to balance its special relations with Washington with its multinational diplomacy. 
Tokyo appears to view London – another of Washington’s closest allies – as a beacon to guide its actions on Mideast issues, or to use  Brexit jargon, a backstop to fend off US pressure.
But a chaotic Brexit – including not just a no-deal withdrawal but also endless talks with the EU during the transition period – is likely to increasingly divert London’s political resources from global affairs. 
As a result, Japan could lose a savvy, stable standard-bearer in multinational diplomacy.
Interventions for ‘predictability’
Ever since the 2016 Brexit referendum, Japan’s stance on the issue has had an unusually interventionist tone, demonstrating Tokyo’s determination to minimise the fallout.
In September 2016, the Japanese government’s Brexit taskforce – an inter-ministerial body established soon after the vote – issued a 15-page document titled “Japan’s Message to the United Kingdom and the European Union”. 
Emphasising the importance of “predictability” in Brexit, Tokyo called for the maintenance of “customs duty-free trade between the UK and the EU” in the message, as well as a transition period.
This request surely touched on Britain’s subtle internal issue of whether to remain in the European single market and customs union. 
In a meeting earlier this month, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe urged his British counterpart Theresa May to avoid a no-deal Brexit and ensure “transparency, predictability and legal stability” in the process.
Corporate Japan has been just as responsive. 
In its statement in August 2016, Keidanren – the country’s largest group of employers – raised the issue of guaranteeing “predictability” in the withdrawal process as its number one demand.
Toyota Motor Corp president Akio Toyoda issued a comment as the chairman of the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association soon after the EU-Britain agreement last month, saying: “We hope that clarity will emerge in regard to the UK-EU relationship as soon as possible” after the Brexit day of March 29, 2019.
Liberal democracy at stake 
  It is easy to reduce the Japanese activism to its business interests. 
Britain is Japan’s second largest investment destination after the United States, with UK foreign direct investment from Japan standing at US$21.6 billion in 2017. 
With convenient air connections as well as an English-speaking environment, the UK has provided Japanese firms with an important hub of operations to expand in the European market.
Japan, however, sees something more crucial than economic loss. 
It is no coincidence that both the government and the private sector in Japan stress “predictability” or “clarity” in Brexit: These are indispensable concepts of British conservatism, whose genes have been deeply inherited in liberal democracy in Japan.
“Then there is a predictable rule of law, some liberty survives,” former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher said during a speech in 1996 in the former socialist country of Poland. 
The anti-communist Iron Lady was known as a strong follower of Friedrich A Hayek, the Austrian-born economic thinker who advocated individual freedom under the rule of law because it ensures predictability.
During the last decade of the Cold War, Thatcher, US President Ronald Reagan and Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone of the Liberal Democratic Party led the capitalist camp, sharing a similar Hayekian neoconservative creed.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe arguably belongs to the same ideological camp, promoting economic deregulation and the rule of law. With the nation’s relatively favourable economic conditions, Japan’s businesses back Abenomics.
As the US commitment to the post-war liberal international order becomes nebulous under President Donald Trump, Abe is increasingly presenting himself as a free-tradist world leader. 
He told the UN General Assembly’s general debate in September:
“Under the flag of free trade, Japan has with any country and any region built up relations in which we each can be of assistance to the other. We will continue to do this going forward.”
If it were not for Brexit, Theresa May with her liberal conservative credentials could be a stronger ally for Abe than she is now.
A Tokyo-based British diplomat admitted that the government of her Conservative predecessor David Cameron looked to China for its Asia policy and that its interest in Japan was lower than it could have been. 
Britain under Cameron was the first G7 nation to announce it was joining the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.
May has shown a more balanced approach than Cameron through such measures as a decision to delay a Chinese-funded nuclear power plant deal. This year, Britain dispatched naval vessels to monitor North Korea’s illicit ship-to-ship transfers.
However, the unpredictable, unclear experiment of Brexit is creating a sense of unease among Japanese people as it appears to break with their familiar image of Britain as the guardian of pragmatic conservatism, both diplomatically and economically.
The most shocking scenario for Japan would be for Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party – with a radical programme of nationalising infrastructure and raising taxes on the rich – to win in a snap election in the aftermath of the Brexit chaos. 
His foreign policy is equally unclear, but it is likely to be a resounding repudiation of neoconservative economics and security commitments.
Will Japan stay internationalist in the 21st century? 
The answer must be yes, but the pain from Brexit will significantly test Tokyo’s globalist credentials amid the precarious international environment.

The writer is an assistant editor of the Japan News.
The Asian Writers’ Circle is a series of columns on global affairs written by top editors and writers from members of the Asia News Network and published in newspapers and websites across the region.