When Junichiro Koizumi became Japan’s prime minister in 2001, he got the royal treatment from George W. Bush: a weekend at the Camp David presidential retreat – hospitality that signalled the US’s “favourable feeling” towards its top Asian ally, as Mr Koizumi put it at the time.

A decade later, Yoshihiko Noda, who was confirmed on Tuesday as Japan’s sixth prime minister in five years, will be lucky to get a meeting in Washington with President Barack Obama when he makes his first visit to the US as leader next month. Instead, he will probably have to settle for a chat on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly, analysts say.

“If he doesn’t get a White House meeting, that would be a real indication that the White House is treading more gingerly than they did when they embraced [Naoto] Kan following [Yukio] Hatoyama,” said Patrick Cronin, an Asia specialist at the Center for a New American Security, referring to Mr Noda’s two predecessors from the Democratic Party of Japan.