WASHINGTON--When Shintaro Ishihara and Akio Morita urged renegotiation of the terms of the Japan-U.S. relationship in their provocative 1991 best-seller, "The Japan That Can Say No," few expected that the then less acquiescent Japan would soon disappear in the minds of many as a recognized major geopolitical force. There was a time when U.S. secretaries of state, senators and even presidents would not make a move without considering what impact it might have on Japan's purchases of U.S. Treasury bonds and whether it would hurt "the relationship." In fact, Mike Mansfield's old aphorism that "the U.S.-Japan relationship is the world's most important bilateral relationship, bar none" seems more a joke today than something anyone actually used to believe.

Perceptions and reality frequently differ, but the gap between Japan's vital importance in global affairs and consciousness of it is about as wide a chasm of ignorance as has ever been in Japan-U.S. relations. The future of that relationship depends on a crisis-punched United States realizing that it must reach out to Japan (and China) and depends upon Japan reasserting its presence and preferences in global affairs. Japan has for years simply been missing from most global efforts and has become a taken-for-granted ally in most things the United States decides to do.

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will soon fly to Asia on her first foreign trip--planning to visit Japan, South Korea, China and Indonesia. This is good news and a sign that the administration of President Barack Obama has placed Asia high in its priorities. The trip also provides a significant opportunity for Clinton to give herself "a policy makeover," and it's a time for Japan to reintroduce itself to the global stage as a nation that matters.

As far as Clinton's makeover goes, she needs to accomplish three things.

First, she must convey a serious understanding of the complexities of Asia-Pacific security and how vital Japan's integrated economic and security affairs with the United States are as a stabilizer in the region. Second, she must convey to China that she will not treat that relationship carelessly or make it a function of public relations stunts as she did when running as a presidential candidate (encouraging then President George W. Bush to boycott the Beijing Olympic Games ceremonies). Third, she must begin to outline a new global social contract with Japan and China--which ultimately will include Germany--in which these major current account surplus nations realize that they cannot grow and the United States cannot return to economic health without dynamic domestic-led consumption inside China, Germany and Japan that helps put U.S. and their own citizens back to work. Global growth can no longer depend on U.S. consumers who underproduce and overconsume.

Japan's and China's surpluses are structural, and they are woven deeply into the U.S. economy. But the economic imbalances between the major Asian economies and the United States have long been the San Andreas Fault of global economics.

While French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been animating "global convenings" on the economy and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown has been scurrying from Beijing to Riyadh to encourage reserve-holding nations to help bolster resources of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, Japan's leaders have been strikingly, disturbingly absent from the world stage.

While Prime Minister Taro Aso did push efforts to bolster Japan's economy while simultaneously cursing U.S. economic management and spitting at Wall Street for shoving the consequences of the U.S. housing bubble collapse toward Tokyo, he never did much beyond Japan's geo-psychological borders.

Aso was right to be angry at Wall Street. We all deserve to be angry--but that does not fix the problems we have today, and Japan has been culpable in building an imbalanced global economy in which it wrongheadedly believed that ever-growing surpluses were "wins" in zero-sum competition with the rest of the world.

Japan was and is a key ally of the United States. But that does not mean Japan should simply acquiesce to U.S. policies. In years past, Japan often shoved back and challenged the United States in the World Trade Organization; wrestled with the United States over the Middle East from time to time and had a major hand in helping the United Nations to become a better resourced and more credible institution while Washington was silently defecting from its U.N. responsibilities.

But Japan today has suffered from the conceit that it could manage its relations and the important U.S.-Japan security alliance and economic relationship through a very narrow but elite channel, from the prime minister and the Washington-based ambassador to a few players in the Bush State Department and National Security Council. Japan, in contrast to its more visible identity in the 1990s, has largely been flying beneath the radar of public opinion since 2001.

One of the primary areas Japan has had some sparks with the United States today is over North Korea--complaining that Japan was left outside of the core negotiations. With access to the game comes responsibility, and Japan's domestic obsessions with the understandable trauma of abductees should never have been allowed to trump Japan's higher ordered interests when it came to nuclear weapons on the Korean Peninsula and nuclear nonproliferation. But Japan demonstrated breathtaking immaturity in the six-party talks--and like Hillary Clinton did over her Olympic boycott proposal--engaged in self-destructive public relations stunts rather than grappling with the realities at hand. Japan can change this behavior and hopefully will.

That has to stop. Japan is needed and vital. The United States needs an Asia strategy that has room both for China and Japan to serve as responsible regional stakeholders of interests and power, working more collaboratively than in zero-sum conflict. But this will require Japan to come out of its shell, to grow up and reestablish itself as a global architect of institutions that are not focused exclusively on Japan's own welfare.

And the United States needs to stop "passing" Japan even if the Japanese do not make a relationship easy.

Japan is a nation that is far too vital to ignore, and it would be irresponsible for the Obama team and Japan's leadership to allow status-quoism to further undermine the health and seriousness of what should be an important relationship.