While tens of thousands of baseball fans watched Taiwan defeat the Czech Republic 14-0 to secure their first victory at the World Baseball Classic at the Tokyo Dome on Saturday, Premier Cho Jung-tai (卓榮泰) was also at the game, marking the first visit to Japan by a sitting Taiwanese premier since the two sides severed diplomatic ties in 1972.
The last incumbent premier to set foot on Japanese territory was Yen Chia-kan (嚴家淦) in 1970, who visited Japan to attend the Japan World Exposition in Osaka.
Since the severance of formal ties between the two nations, Tokyo has tended to scale back visible engagements with Taiwan to avoid damaging relations with China. Of the high-ranking officials who have previously made visits to Japan, most have been retired heads of government, such as former presidents Lee Teng-hui (李登輝) and Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文).
Over the past five decades, official exchanges have been contained at the parliamentary level, while rare visits by executive officials were kept low-profile and limited to non-political events.
Then-vice president William Lai (賴清德) was the last high-ranking executive official to visit Japan in July 2022, when he offered his condolences after the assassination of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe. In 1994, the Chinese Nationalist Party’s (KMT) Hsu Li-teh (徐立德) visited the Hiroshima Asian Games as vice premier, and in June 2023, then-vice premier Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) of the Democratic Progressive Party (DDP) led an economic delegation and met with high-ranking officials of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).
Last year, Minister of Foreign Affairs Lin Chia-lung (林佳龍) made a “secret trip” to Osaka for the Expo 2025, where he met with “friends” who included then-Japanese minister of state for economic security Sanae Takaichi, the current prime minister.
Cho, who was spotted at the Tokyo Dome on Saturday, said he made the self-funded trip with the primary purpose of watching the baseball game and supporting the Taiwan team.
Japanese Chief Cabinet Secretary Minoru Kihara said that the Japanese government had no comment on Cho’s “private visit.”
However, the premier’s trip to Tokyo has set a new precedent in Taiwan-Japan diplomatic relations after 54 years and was widely reported in Japanese media as a significant breakthrough. Furthermore, the visit comes amid mounting tensions between China and Japan after Takaichi in November said that a Chinese naval blockade would constitute an “existential threat to Japan” which could prompt Japan to exercise the right of self-defense.
Although Cho took only a one-day trip to Japan, the Tokyo government’s tacit approval of the visit is tantamount to redefining diplomatic boundaries with Taiwan.
DDP legislators have said that Cho’s “baseball diplomacy” was facilitated by high-ranking members of the LDP and a former representative to Japan, showing the willingness of the Takaichi administration to deepen bilateral interactions in more multifaceted areas and suggesting that the “China factor” shaping Japanese policy toward Taiwan might be weakening.
Statistics from the Japan-Taiwan Exchange Association showed that mutual visits between the two countries reached a record-high 8.2 million visits last year.
The government should seize this warming of Japan-Taiwan relations as an opportunity to strive for an international presence and confront other diplomatic restrictions made by China.
By using a global-focused sports event to make an appearance at the Tokyo Dome, Cho’s trip to some degree has made a successful operation out of soft diplomacy.
However, some KMT lawmakers, echoing China’s protests that Cho’s visit was part of a “pernicious plot,” have focused on trivial aspects of the trip, such as who paid for the trip, despite the many trips that KMT lawmakers had made to China to attend its “united front” events using public funds.
Diplomatic breakthroughs between countries often begin with culture and sports exchanges. Legislators should focus on expanding the nation’s international space, rather than rushing to discourage such efforts.
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