12/26/2023 0 Comments Los angeles earth quake prophecy![]() “Japan is committed to the defence of Taiwan,” asserted Narushige Michishita, vice-president of an elite national graduate school in Tokyo and a former security adviser to the cabinet. Kyodo via Reutersĭoubt swirls around Japan’s future military role in the event of conflict over Taiwan, 750 kilometres south of Okinawa, and there is little public awareness of what it might entail. aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan in Sagami Bay near Tokyo on Nov. ![]() Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, front, second from right, on the U.S. ![]() Kishida easily swatted aside opposition demands in parliament for spending details. A retired Japanese vice-admiral had likened the unseemly scrabble for defence funds to “a swarm of ants trying to get any piece of the 43-trillion-yen mountain of sugar that has emerged almost out of nowhere,” but Mr. The latest development, an epochal lurch toward rearmament and offensive capability, has triggered remarkably little backlash. authorized a National Police Reserve, which became the Japanese “Self-Defence Forces.” Over the decades, the SDF evolved into one of the world’s strongest militaries, although until now, each expansion of its scope has ignited fierce controversy at home. New Deal idealism encapsulated in Article 9 did not long survive contact with Cold War reality. To wean Japan off militarism, young American jurists in the 1945-52 Allied Occupation drew up a Japanese constitution that forever renounces war “as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes.” To this end, “land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained.” “They effectively cast aside a series of policy norms related to defence that have been in place for decades, more than 50 years in some cases.” “Unprecedented in the post-World War II era,” recently enthused Christopher Johnstone, a former CIA and Pentagon officer, now Japan Chair at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies based in Washington. The Tomahawks will later be replaced by Japan’s own long-range missiles, some of them for submarine launch. The shopping list includes hundreds of American cruise missiles capable of reaching inside China. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida has vowed to increase defence spending by 60 per cent over the next five years. China’s unflagging military buildup, especially its threat to take back democratic Taiwan by force, has effectively shattered Japan’s post-1945 consensus never to prepare for war again. The most startling change is the crumbling away of Japanese pacifism. Open this photo in gallery:Ī staff holds the Japanese flag in front of a Japan Ground Self-Defence Force's the 1/2 Ton Truck, during the handover ceremony of defence equipment for Ukraine at Ministry of Defence in Tokyo on May 24. The chief executives of Apple, Google and OpenAI have joined Warren Buffett in waving their digital chequebooks around Tokyo. The world’s biggest chipmakers – Taiwan Semiconductor, Micron, Intel and Samsung – are pouring billions of dollars into Japanese factories. tries to decouple from China, military tensions ratchet up and rival blocs solidify, Japan has astutely positioned itself as a reliable Western ally and safe haven for sensitive technologies. This time around, one of the big draws of Japan is that it is not like its colossal neighbour. The Nikkei is back to where it was 33 years ago, just a few months after the stock bubble popped. It is not just that Japan’s peerless railways, low crime rate, social discipline and etiquette, numeracy and literacy remain objects of rueful envy for much of the developed world. Vogel’s learn-from-Japan manifesto became an easy butt of mockery, as critics of “Japan Inc.” wallowed in schadenfreude. Yet within three decades, China catapulted from Maoist isolation to surpass Japan as the world’s second-largest economy, intent on challenging the United States as global hegemon. In 1979, Mao Zedong’s embalmed cadaver had only recently entered its Beijing mausoleum and the trial of the Gang of Four fanatics had not begun. When the mother-of-all bubbles burst, the Japanese banking system cratered, and Japan was consigned to “lost decades” of frustration and humiliation, as China wrested away the crown of Asian powerhouse. It was calculated that the land value of a single central ward of Tokyo could purchase all of Canada.Īs we all know, this ended in tears. A roll call of Japanese industries became all-conquering, and the Nikkei average of Japanese stock prices quintupled. When published in 1979, it perfectly captured the spell cast by an emerging superpower, and the next decade appeared to vindicate the Harvard professor’s prophecy of Japanese ascendancy. ![]() He was based in Japan for 19 years.Įzra Vogel’s Japan as Number One ranks among the most influential books about Asia. Peter McGill is a British journalist and author. ![]()
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