Obama Seeks to Improve Relations in Tokyo

President Obama arrived in Tokyo on Friday afternoon, beginning his one-week tour of Asia with an effort to resuscitate flagging relations with Japan, once America’s most important ally in the region.

Mr. Obama will spend the next week trying to convince Asian leaders that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have not completely distracted the United States from Asia.

But in Japan, Mr. Obama will have a lot of convincing to do. American relations with Japan are at their most contentious since the trade wars of the 1990s. Japan’s newly elected Democratic Party has been blunt about seeking a more “equal” relationship with the United States, and Japanese officials say they now intend to focus more on cementing their relationships with other Asian nations.

The Japanese government has said that the country intends to withdraw from an eight-year-old mission in the Indian Ocean to refuel warships supporting American military efforts in Afghanistan. And Japan also plans to revisit a 2006 agreement to relocate a Marine airfield in Okinawa to a less populated part of the island, and to move thousands of Marines from Okinawa to Guam.

Mr. Obama was scheduled to meet with Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama on Friday evening, and the two leaders were expected to try to smooth the diplomatic wrinkles.