By Michael J. Green, Senior Adviser and Japan Chair, CSIS

On Monday morning the Japanese dailies led with the story that Foreign Minister Seiji Maehara would resign his cabinet post because of a fund-raising scandal. Apparently, a Korean resident of Japan and old friend of Maehara’s made a contribution to his political office in clear violation of laws preventing such contributions from foreign sources. Maehara claims this transaction was handled by his staffer without his knowledge, but rather than subject Prime Minister Kan to weeks of criticism and scrutiny as the Diet gears up for extended debate over budget-related bills, Maehara chose to step down immediately.

This news will come as a shock and disappointment to senior officials in the Obama administration who had come to know and respect Maehara for his strategic perspective on trade and foreign policy matters –a rare commodity with the often populist and amateur DPJ government. Maehara is a graduate of the prestigious Kyoto University and a star student of the late Masataka Kosaka, a legendary scholar of international relations in Japan. Maehara had emerged as the most articulate champion of Japanese participation in the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP) and was a key architect of Japan’s trilateral coordination with the United States and South Korea after the North Korean attacks on the Cheonan and Yongpeong Island. Before this scandal, Maehara also led in Japanese public opinion polls as the favored successor to the beleaguered Prime Minister Naoto Kan.

Maehara’s resignation will take some wind out of the sails for TPP and could complicate bilateral management of sensitive alliance issues, including plans for replacing the U.S. Marine Corps Air Station at Futenma in Okinawa. Beijing will be quietly celebrating, since the Chinese government blames Maehara for pushing a firm line in Tokyo in the aftermath of a Chinese fishing boat’s collision with a Japanese Coast Guard cutter near the disputed Senkaku Islands. Maehara’s resignation will also be a blow for Kan, who is already below 20% levels of support in most opinion surveys. With this, the odds that Kan is forced to resign himself or call a snap election increase (probably to slightly more than 50/50).

Maehara spoke at CSIS in January.

And Maehara’s future? His decision to step down has a silver lining. Had he taken over from Kan this summer as many expected, he would have faced an impossible situation. Every other prime minister since Koizumi (and there have been five!) has seen their support rates plummet and been forced to resign in a year or less. The next DPJ prime minister will have to preside over certain electoral defeat in the Lower House of the Diet, since the DPJ won so big in August 2009. Many of Maehara’s supporters worried that his enormous potential as leader would have been squandered had he assumed the reins this year. He is only 48 years old and still has plenty of time to make a comeback years down the road in a more favorable political context. In other words, Maehara will probably be back. For now, however, his absence will be keenly felt by internationalists in Washington and Tokyo.