TOKYO - When Vladimir Putin was preparing for another shot at the Russian presidency a little over two years ago, he said he would give a command to Russian and Japanese officials: "hajime."
After half a century of frosty relations with Moscow, the order to “start” – using a word employed in the Japanese martial art of judo, in which Putin is a black belt – was well received in Tokyo. Even more so when Shinzo Abe returned later in 2012 for his second tenure as Japan’s prime minister and ordered his own restart with Russia, driven by pragmatic and regional considerations.
