As he hands over a freshly printed Minister of Foreign Affairs name card for the first time, Katsuya Okada betrays none of the elation or uncertainty that might be expected of a novice cabinet member whose party has just taken power for the first time.

Instead, Japan’s new top diplomat calmly and assuredly lays out his plans for a potentially historic shake-up of Japan’s international strategy: a drive to adopt a more assertive global role and to recalibrate a military alliance with the US that has been a pillar of east-Asian stability for half a century.