At a fraught time—with Beijing blundering through the South China Sea, despite a Hague panel smacking down its bogus territorial claims, and North Korea firing ballistic missiles into Japanese waters, for example—it might behoove Japan to embrace a more conciliatory stance towards the other great democracy in Northeast Asia, South Korea.

But that has seldom been Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe's way.

On Wednesday, Abe announced the appointment of a new defense minister, Tomomi Inada. Inada, a 57-year old woman (the second in Japan's history to serve as defense minister) has what are euphemistically referred to as "revisionist" views. She wants to change Japan's American-imposed pacifist constitution. She regularly prays at the Yasukuni Shrine, where the souls of 14 class-A war criminals are enshrined. (Even the proudly nationalist Abe has stopped going there as of late.) And she takes an expansive view of Japanese territorial claims, enraging South Korea after having made a provocative visit to a set of dispute islands that lie between Japan and the Korean peninsula.

At a news conference announcing his cabinet reshuffle, Abe—rather oddly—said that "We will strengthen relationships with neighboring countries such as . . . South Korea."

That may be hard to do, given that recently, when Inada landed at a South Korean airport, she was barred from entering the country.