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Seventy-five years ago today, Japan adopted a constitution that ruled out ever using war as a tool of state policy. The country’s conservative leaders now want to ditch that commitment as they embrace the dangerous role of a militarized US client state.
Uniquely among the world’s constitutions, (...)
• Post-war Japan has amassed a considerable pile of armaments while flying under the radar. It already has more aircraft carriers than China – it just dumbs them down as ‘helicopter carriers’
• With all eyes on Taiwan, Tokyo’s rising military spending may be contributing to the escalating arms (...)
With an aim to realize Japan’s accession to the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons (TPNW), the Japan Council against A and H Bombs (Gensuikyo) made utmost effort in the latest general election to create a government which will join it, welcoming the landmark policy agreement between (...)
• Tokyo is one of three new non-member partners to the Five Eyes spy alliance which collects intelligence on North Korean ballistic missile launches
• Under the ‘Five Eyes plus’ framework, partners will exchange data on a range of areas, including China’s military, cybersecurity and outer space (...)
Cabinet approves purchase of two Aegis Ashore land-based interceptors in face of ‘imminent’ national security threat.
Japan is to boost its ability to counter the “serious and imminent” threat posed by North Korea’s ballistic missiles with the deployment of ground-based interceptors bought from (...)
Navy destroyers will join USS Carl Vinson for military drills amid fears Pyongyang plans further nuclear and missile tests.
Japan is preparing to send several warships to join a US aircraft carrier strike group heading for the Korean peninsula, in a show of force designed to deter North Korea (...)
Thanks to the constitution imposed on its citizens by the US after the end of World War II, Japan has long been thought of by pacifists as a “Peace State” :
“The Japanese people forever renounce […] the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.”
It goes on to state that (...)
Japan will lease additional land next year to expand a military base in Djibouti, eastern Africa, as a counterweight to what it sees as growing Chinese influence in the region, three Japanese government sources said.
China is seeking closer ties with African nations that could help it gain (...)
Defence ministry requests £27bn amid concern over Beijing’s construction of artificial bases in the South China Sea and claims to Senkaku islands.
Japan’s defence ministry has requested its biggest ever budget to bolster its ability to protect outlying islands in response to China’s growing (...)
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s failure to include a pledge to observe the country’s three nonnuclear principles in the annual memorial speech on Thursday remembering the victims of the Hiroshima atomic bomb attack is causing speculation the exclusion may be political.
In 2014 and 2013, Abe himself (...)
Japan is facing a constitutional crisis. The ruling coalition seeks to pass legislation that would overturn the nation’s longstanding prohibition of “collective self-defense.” Expert opinion is nearly unanimous that these proposals violate Article 9, the peace provision of Japan’s Constitution. As (...)
At US$42bn the budget is another yearly increase but it is still dwarfed by both China and the US.
Japan has announced its biggest ever defence budget in response to China’s increasing military influence in the region and Beijing’s claims to a group of disputed islands administered by Tokyo. (...)
Japan to bolster warning system to defy China
TOKYO (Kyodo) — Japan will strengthen its surveillance and warning capabilities with new aircraft to cope with China’s growing assertiveness at sea and in airspace, and drop the word “modest” to describe the country’s defense power in upcoming defense (...)
Japan mulls new defense equipment production strategy
TOKYO (Kyodo) — The Defense Ministry plans to adopt by March a new defense equipment production strategy, revamping the policy followed since 1970 of limiting production to domestic makers, a Japanese government official said Saturday.
The (...)
Japan will soon be party to a renewed joint statement on the humanitarian impact of nuclear weapons, but contradictions remain between the statement’s goal of a world without nuclear weapons and Japan’s dependence on U.S. nuclear deterrence.
Japan’s decision to sign the Joint Statement on the (...)
Japan will sign for the first time a joint statement to be issued at the United Nations calling on countries not to use nuclear weapons under any circumstances, government sources said Thursday.
Similar U.N. statements have been drafted three times before, but Japan refused to endorse them on (...)
Determined Abe seeks equality in Japan-U.S. relationship through collective self-defense
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Sept. 17 expressed his desire to have the government change its interpretation of the nation’s pacifist Constitution to allow Japan to exercise the right to collective (...)
NAGASAKI — As Nagasaki marked the 68th anniversary of the atomic bombing in a ceremony on Aug. 9, the city’s mayor Tomihisa Taue criticized the national government for its passive attitude toward nuclear disarmament.
In the Nagasaki Peace Declaration presented at the ceremony, Mayor Taue pointed (...)
Japan raises eyebrows by unveiling largest warship since World War II
YOKOHAMA/SEOUL — Japan on Tuesday unveiled its biggest warship since the end of World War II, a huge flat-top « destroyer » that has raised eyebrows in China and elsewhere because of its strong resemblance to a conventional (...)
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has picked diplomat Ichiro Komatsu, who is in favor of lifting the ban on Japan exercising a right to collective self-defense, to become director general of the Cabinet Legislation Bureau and pave the way for the government to change its interpretation of the pacifist (...)
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