Abe has said a possible breakthrough on the issue might prompt him to call a snap election in September.

It is not just the Abe's diplomacy that the US is unhappy with, the right-wing administration's attempts to whitewash Japan's past is also making many in the US uneasy.

In October last year, Kerry and US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel made themselves serve as an example to Abe and his Cabinet members by paying their respects for fallen Japanese soldiers to a cemetery in Tokyo. Anyone with any sense knows they were sending the message that it should be this cemetery, rather than the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, where Japanese officials should go to honor those that died in war. But Abe chose to ignore their message and, instead, visited the Yasukuni Shrine in December.

Will Abe now fly to Pyongyang in defiance of the US warning? Will he insist on welcoming Putin in Tokyo in autumn?

Should Abe proceed with either or both these plans the divide that has appeared between the two allies will widen. Yet, however much Abe would like to break away from his country's post-war regime, which, in his words, was created by the US occupying forces, he cannot design Japan's diplomatic strategy without US consent.

Thus he is hopping from one horn to the other in his dilemma.

The author is Tokyo bureau chief of China Daily. caihong@chinadaily.com.cn

(China Daily 08/06/2014 page8)