| Mar 15 | Rudd plan to skip nonproliferation summit ups tensions with Japan (AP) |
| Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's decision to skip a nuclear nonproliferation summit to be held in Washington next month is adding to Australia's already strained relations with Japan over the issue of whaling, The Australian newspaper reported Monday. Deputy opposition leader and shadow foreign minister Julie Bishop, who recently returned from a visit to Japan, told the daily there were concerns "that Mr. Rudd's commitment to the International Commission on Nuclear Non-proliferation and Disarmament is waning, given that he will reportedly not attend an important meeting next month." |
| Mar 15 | Japan faces fiscal rot as scandal-hit leaders again roll out the pork barrel (Sydney Morning Herald) |
| When asked if he had ever read the classic text Economics by Paul Samuelson, a book most first-year students in the subject are familiar with, Japanese Finance Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Naoto Kan replied: "I read about 10 pages." Of course, no textbook can provide all the answers a finance minister needs in today's post-crisis world, particularly to meet Japan's daunting challenges. But many Japanese were dumbfounded to learn their finance minister began to grapple with the basic economic principles only after assuming office. |
| Mar 14 | Ministry e-mailed TV stations over suicide story (Yomiuri) |
| A senior official of the Internal Affairs and Communications Ministry sent e-mails to five private TV stations in Tokyo inquiring about their coverage of the suicide of a 14-year-old girl, The Yomiuri Shimbun has learned. The inquiries, which have since been retracted, are rare moves by the ministry, which is authorized to issue broadcasting licenses to TV stations. Some observers have criticized the inquiries as intervening in media activities. |
| Mar 13 | Japan's massive mystery deposit in U.S. Federal Reserve proof of shoddy administration (Mainichi) |
| An investigation by the Ministry of Finance has confirmed that the Japanese government deposited $103 million into a zero-interest account at the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank of New York between 1972, when Okinawa was formally returned to Japan, and 1999. Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Naoto Kan has also admitted that there was a secret pact between Japan and the U.S. over the reversion of Okinawa. At the same time, it has been learned that no documents relating to the deposit were retained on Japan's side, and officials at the Ministry of Finance did not hand down information to their successors. |
| Mar 12 | High F-35 cost may force Japan to review next main fighter choice (AP) |
 The U.S. government told a congressional panel Thursday that the procurement cost of the F-35 next-generation stealth fighter will likely nearly double from the initial estimate to $95 million.
The higher-than-expected cost could prompt Japan to think twice about selecting the aircraft as the nation's next-generation mainstay fighter, observers said.
Tokyo sees the F-35 as the primary candidate to replace F-4 fighters currently deployed in Japan's Air Self-Defense Force. It aims to decide on its mainstay fighter by this fall.
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| Mar 12 | Tokyo ward mayor sets example by taking paternity leave (Japan Times) |
| Hironobu Narisawa, mayor of Bunkyo Ward, Tokyo, plans to take about two weeks of paternity leave in April to encourage other male staff to follow suit, officials said Thursday. "I want to enjoy both the joy and pain of child-rearing as a father," said the mayor, 44, whose wife had their first child, a boy, on Feb. 5. "As a mayor who has to exert leadership, I want to support male employees" in taking paternity leave, he said at a press conference. |
| Mar 11 | High court rules 2009 general election constitutional (AP) |
| The Tokyo High Court on Thursday declared last year's general election constitutional despite a sharp disparity in the value of each vote between constituencies, ruling differently from four other high court panels that ruled it unconstitutional or close to unconstitutional. Presiding Judge Tatsuki Inada also turned down a suit filed by two voters in Tokyo and one in neighboring Kanagawa Prefecture who sought a court decision to make the election results in their single-seat constituencies invalid. |
| Mar 11 | 65 years after the war, Japan needs convincing of the need for US bases (Times Online) |
 On a humid March evening in Okinawa young American men with crewcuts and thick necks sprawl out from the bars and lap-dancing clubs that cluster near US military bases across the island.
"Marijuana - it's like alcohol, but . . ." reads one T-shirt. A young white man weaves his Honda Saloon at speed through cars heading for a junction. "We all pull clear," one Japanese driver says. "There are so many accidents."
The US has slapped tough rules on the 22,000 Marines and 24,000 other personnel on its vast bases on Okinawa, the southernmost island of Japan, after the rape of a 12-year-old girl by three servicemen in 1995 brought tens of thousands of people on to the streets in protest.
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| Mar 10 | Hirano says unused secret funds to be returned to treasury (AP) |
| Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano said Wednesday any unused discretionary funds at his disposal will be returned to state coffers after the current fiscal year through the end of this month. He also pledged not to use up all of the funds, claiming the previous government led by the Liberal Democratic Party had done so. Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, who took office last September in a historic change of power, has said he will try to bring more transparency to the funds, which are intended to pay for the costs of classified government activities, including intelligence gathering. |
| Mar 10 | U.S. subs unlikely to visit Japanese ports with Tomahawk: Okada (AP) |
| Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada said Wednesday that he does not think the United States will load nuclear Tomahawk cruise missiles on its attack submarines when they make port calls in Japan, in line with a U.S. policy to withdraw tactical nuclear weapons on its ships. "There are deep exchanges between the Japanese and the U.S. governments...But I don't think that Tomahawk will be reloaded," Okada told a parliamentary committee, a day after a Foreign Ministry panel acknowledged the existence of a "tacit agreement" that led Japan to allow U.S. nuclear-armed ships to visit Japanese ports without prior consultation. |
| Mar 10 | Chrysanthemum or Samurai? (foreignpolicy.com) |
 In a thoughtful essay in today's Financial Times, Gideon Rachman asks whether Japan may now be tilting towards China after 60 years of aligning itself with the United States. This question is interesting on multiple dimensions -- including with regard to the future of U.S. primacy in Asia, the impact of China's rise on its neighbors, the nature of Japanese politics and identity, and our understanding of the deep structure of international relations at a time of systemic power shifts. Indeed, Japan is a critical case study for assessing how the developed world will respond to the rise of dynamic new power centers in Asia -- and what the implications will be for American leadership in the international system.
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| Mar 09 | Korea, Japan to sign e-government deal (Korea Times) |
| Korea is set to export its e-government systems to Japan a hundred years after it was forced to adopt Japan's administrative system and rules under its colonial occupation. Korea and Japan will sign an agreement on e-government cooperation and technological exchange later this month, according to a government source. Korean IT companies have sold electronic government systems to Japan's local governments since 2004, but it will be the first such deal between the central governments of the two countries. |
| Mar 09 | Japan-U.S. secret pacts confirmed, gov't policy shift expected (AP) |
| A Foreign Ministry panel concluded Tuesday that secret pacts on nuclear arms and other issues were reached between Japan and the United States in the Cold War era, leading the Japanese government to end its decades-long official denial of their existence. While such pacts have already been exposed through U.S. declassified documents and other sources, the panel investigation, launched following the historic change of government last year, made clear that previous governments were "dishonest" over the issue and raised questions over the management and disclosure of diplomatic documents. |
| Mar 08 | Japan PM in a bind as upper house election looms (Reuters) |
 Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama, his party flagging in polls ahead of a mid-year election, promised on Monday to find a way to regain public backing but said he was not considering a cabinet reshuffle now.
Only one in four voters plan to cast their ballots for his Democratic Party in an upper house election expected in July, a Yomiuri newspaper survey showed on Monday, as funding scandals and doubts about the premier's leadership erode his support.
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| Mar 08 | Only 25 percent to vote for Japan ruling party: poll (Reuters) |
| Only one in four Japanese voters plan to vote for the ruling party in a key election expected in July, a survey showed on Monday, as funding scandals and doubts about the prime minister's leadership erode his support. Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama's Democratic Party needs to win the election for parliament's upper house to avoid parliamentary deadlock and policy paralysis as Japan struggles to keep a fragile recovery on track and rein in its massive public debt. |
| Mar 07 | $10 visa charge by U.S. irks Japan (Japan Times) |
| Japanese Ambassador to the United States Ichiro Fujisaki expressed concern Friday over Washington's new policy of charging travelers to the U.S. $10 if they don't have a visa, saying it runs counter to bilateral exchanges. Asked about the travel promotion act that President Barack Obama signed into law Thursday, Fujisaki told a news conference: "Such a measure is not desirable. Regardless of the amount of the fee, it will not contribute to exchanges" between Japan and the United States. |
| Mar 07 | Australian police search anti-whaling ships for Japan (AFP) |
 Australian police searched two anti-whaling ships at the request of Japanese authorities on Saturday, seizing log books and videos, after activists called a halt to their turbulent harassment campaign.
Police boarded the Sea Shepherd group's Steve Irwin and Bob Barker ships as they were greeted by well-wishers in Tasmania, but refused to reveal the reasons for the search warrant.
"As a result of a formal referral from Japanese authorities, the Australian Federal Police can confirm it conducted a search warrant in boarding the Steve Irwin this morning," a police spokesman told AFP.
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| Mar 06 | DPJ lawmaker says 'morally' responsible for arrests, future uncertain (AP) |
| Japanese ruling party lawmaker Chiyomi Kobayashi, under fire for four arrests in connection with illegal donations for her election campaign, said Saturday she has moral responsibility for the alleged cases but denied her intention to step down any time soon. Kobayashi, a Democratic Party of Japan lower house member, said in her constituency in Hokkaido that she feels responsible for the misconduct "as a politician and from a moral standpoint" but added she will "await a decision by prosecutors before deciding" on her future as a Diet member. |
| Mar 06 | US sees 'critical role' for Japan on Iran (Bangkok Post) |
Japan -- which relies heavily on Middle Eastern oil and, unlike its chief ally the United States, maintains relatively cordial ties with Iran -- next month takes the rotating chair of the UN Security Council.
US Deputy Secretary of State Jim Steinberg, after a lengthy meeting with Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada, said they had focused particularly on Iran, which Western powers suspect is seeking a nuclear weapon.
"Japan plays a very critical role on this question," said Steinberg. "It's a leader and a very strong voice in supporting a non-proliferation regime with a very strong commitment to dealing with the challenge of nuclear weapons."
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| Mar 06 | Kan: Govt had 'secret pact' account (Yomiuri) |
| The government has confirmed the existence in a U.S. bank of an interest-free savings account that is linked to an alleged secret Japan-U.S. agreement on the financial cost of the 1972 reversion of Okinawa to Japan, Finance Minister Naoto Kan said Friday. According to government sources, the U.S. bank was the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. However, it remains unclear whether the government in power at the time, instead of earning interest on the deposit, might instead have used it to provide the United States with de facto funding for the reversion costs. |
| Mar 06 | Antipoverty activist quits as adviser (Japan Times) |
| Antipoverty campaigner Makoto Yuasa stepped down as an adviser at the Cabinet Office on Friday and his resignation was accepted by Deputy Prime Minister Naoto Kan. Kan and Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama had urged Yuasa to stay in the position, but they eventually determined it would be difficult to persuade him otherwise. |
| Mar 06 | The strange death of Japan’s LDP (East Asia Forum) |
| When the Hosokawa government - with Ozawa Ichiro, then secretary-general of one of the leading parties of the eight-party coalition backing the government - passed electoral reform in 1994, one of the arguments made then and ever since by Japanese politicians (and American political scientists) was that the new mixed single-member district/proportional representation electoral system would produce a British-style two-party system that would complement the British-style administrative and political reforms desired by Ozawa and other politicians. |
| Mar 05 | Tokyo to shut its eyes on nukes (Asahi) |
| Switching its take on whether U.S. warships have ever introduced nuclear weapons to Japan, Tokyo has opted to say it is "unaware of" such an apparent breach of its non-nuclear principles, sources said. Previously, the government maintained no U.S. ships or aircraft carrying nuclear weapons had made port calls or passed through Japanese territory because it had never been asked to permit such vessels to do so. |
| Mar 03 | Upper house begins budget deliberations, Hatoyama gov't grilled (AP) |
| The House of Councillors began deliberations over the budget proposal for the new fiscal year from April 1, with the opposition bloc continuing to focus on funding scandals involving ruling lawmakers, including Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama. Pressed for a comment on the 1.17 billion yen his mother had provided to his office over seven years through 2008, Hatoyama told the upper house Budget Committee that he will explain how it was spent after the trial of his indicted former state-paid aide is over. |
| Mar 02 | Maehara to be disciplined over disclosure on public works budget (AP) |
| Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama expressed intention Monday to discipline land minister Seiji Maehara over the ruling Democratic Party of Japan's disclosure of information to local governments on planned public works allocations in the fiscal 2010 budget before the passage of the budget through parliament. "The problem lies in the fact that the precious information that should be determined through budget deliberations was relayed to local governments through a political party," Hatoyama said during a session of the House of Representatives Budget Committee. |
| Mar 01 | Japan to provide $3 mil. in emergency aid to quake-struck Chile (AP) |
| Japan decided Monday to provide up to $3 million in emergency grant aid to Chile to help the country cope with the massive magnitude-8.8 earthquake there, Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano said. Tokyo will also provide supplies worth up to 30 million yen, such as makeshift tents, water purifiers and power generators, which are stockpiled in Miami, Florida, by the Japan International Cooperation Agency, he said at a news conference. |
| Mar 01 | New Chinese Ambassador Cheng arrives in Tokyo (AP) |
| China's new ambassador to Japan, Cheng Yonghua, arrived at Narita airport near Tokyo on Sunday evening and took up his official duties the same day. Cheng, who previously did four stints at the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo including an assignment as deputy chief of mission, is expected to try to cement Beijing's ties with the government of Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama in support of Tokyo's vision for an East Asian community. |
| Mar 01 | Why Japan is ready for anything Pyongyang might want to throw at it (guardian.co.uk) |
 At Iruma military base in Saitama prefecture, north of Tokyo, air force major Hiroshi Taniguchi is ready for anything. As commander of the 4th air defence missile unit, Taniguchi is on the frontline of Japan's much downplayed but scarily real stand-off with North Korea, one of several potential conflicts in a rough neighbourhood.
Japanese politicians and their US military allies tend to soft-pedal problems with Pyongyang, stressing the need to resume the diplomatic process broken off last year. But no one at Iruma has forgotten the moment last April when North Korea lofted a TaepoDong-2 long-range ballistic missile over Japan, sending it crashing into the Pacific - or the North's second nuclear test explosion the following month.
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| Feb 28 | Bill stipulates 25% CO2 cuts (Yomiuri) |
| The government will set a midterm target of reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 25 percent from 1990 levels by 2020 if all major emitters agree with a fair, effective framework, according to the outline of the bill to tackle global warming. The outline, announced by the Environment Ministry on Friday, also stipulates that until such an agreement is reached, the government will instead focus on its long-term target to slash greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050. |
| Feb 28 | Hatoyama, Obama 'to meet in April' (Yomiuri) |
| Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama and U.S. President Barack Obama will hold a summit meeting in April when the Japanese leader visits Washington, it has been learned. The two governments are close to finalizing the meeting, sources said Saturday. The talks between Hatoyama and Obama likely will be held on the sidelines of an international summit on nuclear security scheduled to take place in Washington on April 12 and 13. |
| Feb 26 | Hatoyama denies abductions linked to excluding pro-Pyongyang schools (AP) |
| Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said Friday his government will decide whether to exclude pro-Pyongyang senior high schools for Korean residents in Japan from a proposed tuition waiver program depending on their curricula, stressing that North Korea's abductions of Japanese nationals will not play a part in the decision. "For the program, school curricula will be definitely one thing to be considered," he told reporters Friday morning. "But the problem is whether we can examine the curricula of a country that does not have any diplomatic ties (with Japan)." |
| Feb 26 | Australia warns Japan over whaling (AFP) |
 Australia Friday warned Japan that "diplomacy comes to an end this year" on whaling, after presenting a bold plan to phase out the controversial hunts in the Southern Ocean.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd, repeating his threat to sue Japan, said time was running out on its practice of killing hundreds of minke whales near Antarctica each year in the name of scientific research.
"We are saying loud and clear to our friends in Japan that Australia does not support the continuation of commercial or scientific whaling in the Southern Ocean, we have a very basic position," Rudd told reporters.
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| Feb 26 | Japan disputes racism allegations at U.N. panel (AP) |
| Japan does not need laws to combat racial discrimination, a Japanese official said Thursday as Japan's racism record was examined by the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination. "Punitive legislation on racial discrimination may hamper legitimate discourse," Mitsuko Shino of the Japanese Foreign Ministry told a session in Geneva. "And I don't think the situation in Japan is one of rampant discrimination, so we will not be examining this now." |
| Feb 26 | Floundering in the foggy fortress (The Economist) |
| The DPJ came to power in September promising to break the disreputable triangle linking the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), the bureaucracy and big business. This triangle helped keep the LDP in power for almost 55 years. In its crassest form, in the booming 1980s, the model plumbed the depths of corruption and bad governance. Business lobbied for contracts and support by pouring money into the party's coffers and the mandarins' pockets. The cash won the party elections and feathered the bureaucrats' nests. With the LDP's blessing, the mandarins made policy, to be rubber-stamped by the cabinet. |
| Feb 26 | Japan says willing to sign treaty on child abduction (AFP) |
 Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said Thursday he is willing to sign a treaty against international parental child abductions, but warned Tokyo may need at least another year before signing it.
Activists say that thousands of foreign parents have lost access to children in Japan, where the courts virtually never award child custody to a divorced foreign parent.
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| Feb 25 | 'Not realistic' to set rules on emperor's acts: gov't report (AP) |
| The government has determined that it is "not realistic" to establish unified rules for acts performed by the emperor in his official capacity outside the affairs of state because such acts vary in nature, according to a report released Thursday. Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirofumi Hirano told a press conference Thursday morning that he submitted the report to the executive board of the House of Representatives' Budget Committee. He later released the report to the media following another press conference in the afternoon. |
| Feb 25 | Japan says Australian proposal to end whaling 'regrettable' (AP) |
| A senior Japanese Foreign Ministry official on Thursday described as 'regrettable' Australia's move to submit a proposal to the International Whaling Commission seeking to end whaling in the Antarctic Ocean within five years. "It is regrettable that such a proposal was made," State Secretary for Foreign Affairs Koichi Takemasa told a press conference following Australia's announcement of the proposal the same day. |
| Feb 25 | Politically connect: Twitter use is up (Japan Times) |
| Presumably exhausted from all the heat over his political money scandals, Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama recently limited the number of questions he takes from reporters every morning as he leaves his official residence. But in the safe, cozy world of Twitter, Hatoyama - like many other politicians waking up and joining the 21st century - seems to have found the joy of posting comments without facing an inquiring press. |
| Feb 24 | Japan offers to enrich uranium for Iran (AFP) |
 Japan has offered to enrich uranium for Iran to allow it access to nuclear power while allaying international fears it might be seeking an atomic weapon, the Nikkei business daily reported Wednesday.
Tehran had not yet given a concrete response, but the issue was expected to be discussed Wednesday in Tokyo by Iran's parliament speaker Ali Larijani and Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada, the daily said in an online report.
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| Feb 24 | Court rules last general election close to being unconstitutional (AP) |
| The Tokyo High Court ruled Wednesday that the Aug. 30 general election that brought the Democratic Party of Japan to power went against the spirit of the Constitution that calls for an equal vote, given a disparity in vote value of as much as 2.3 to 1. The court, however, rejected the demand by lawyers who filed the suit to nullify election returns in nine constituencies in Tokyo and Kanagawa Prefecture, where the value of one vote was considerably lower than in rural areas. |
| Feb 23 | Cabinet support rate slides further to 37% (Asahi) |
| Political fund scandals continued to dog the Hatoyama Cabinet, as its support rate dropped below 40 percent for the first time, according to an Asahi Shimbun poll conducted over the weekend. The support rate was 37 percent, down from 41 percent in the Feb. 5-6 survey, but the nonsupport rate stayed about the same at 46 percent, compared with 45 percent in the previous poll. When Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama took office in September, his administration received a 71-percent approval rate. The figure has steadily declined, including a plunge from 62 percent to 48 percent in December. |
| Feb 23 | Japan and Australia: stalled in domestic politics (East Asia Forum) |
| Whales do not usually surface by the exclusive north shore of Sydney harbour. Yet when Japanese Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada sat down for a meeting with Kevin Rudd at the Australian Prime Minister's official Sydney residence, Kirribilli House, on Saturday afternoon, the topic was very much on the menu of their conversation. Prime Minister Rudd declared just the previous day that, as pledged while in Opposition, if a diplomatic agreement to end Japan's Antarctic whaling program by November was not achieved then '...let me tell you, we'll be going to the International Court of Justice.' |
| Feb 23 | LDP boycotts lower house session (Yomiuri) |
| The major opposition Liberal Democratic Party on Monday intensified its confrontational stance against the ruling camp on Diet business in a move spurred by a victory by an LDP-backed candidate in Sunday's Nagasaki gubernatorial election. The LDP boycotted a House of Representatives Budget Committee session Monday morning to protest the ruling camp's refusal to summon Democratic Pary of Japan Secretary General Ichiro Ozawa and others for questioning over their alleged involvement in political funding irregularities. |
| Feb 23 | No one-size-fits-all for foreign suffrage (Japan Times) |
 Support has been surprisingly muted for the Hatoyama administration's push toward suffrage for foreign permanent residents, even among the constituencies such a law would enfranchise. The debate is definitely a hot one, sparking a number of protests against the plan around Tokyo, with opposition logic ranging from the rational ("They should nationalize") to xenophobic ("Foreigners who hate Japan will take over the country").
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| Feb 22 | Hatoyama says scandals affected Nagasaki gubernatorial election (AP) |
| Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama said Monday the "question of politics and money" influenced the Nagasaki gubernatorial election the previous day, in which a candidate backed by his Democratic Party of Japan was defeated. But Hatoyama reiterated his intention to head toward the House of Councillors election this summer under the current party leadership, with Secretary General Ichiro Ozawa remaining in the party No. 2 post to take the lead in campaign strategies. |
| Feb 22 | Japan PM suffers blow with local election loss (Reuters) |
| A ruling party-backed candidate lost an election for governor in southern Japan on Sunday, public broadcaster NHK said, a new sign of trouble for Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama ahead of a mid-year national election. The defeat could embolden opposition parties to step up calls for probes into a funding scandal embroiling the ruling Democratic Party's No.2 leader, stalling debate on a record budget for the year from April 1 intended to keep a fragile economic recovery on track. |
| Feb 21 | Bill targets surnames, inheritance bias, divorcee wait (Japan Times) |
| The Justice Ministry has outlined a Civil Code revision bill that will allow married couples to have separate surnames and work to relax two practices deemed discriminatory: one that restricts inheritances of children born out of wedlock and one that bars women from remarrying until six months after a divorce. Unveiled at a Friday policy meeting, the bill would enable married couples to choose whether to have the same family name or keep their birth name. |
| Feb 21 | LDP to field Miyazawa in election (Japan Times) |
| The Hiroshima prefectural chapter of the Liberal Democratic Party said Saturday it has decided to field former House of Representatives member Yoichi Miyazawa for this summer's Upper House election. The 59-year-old Miyazawa, a nephew of the late former Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa, was picked as the party's candidate in a vote among LDP ranks on who should represent the party in the constituency. |
| Feb 20 | Hatoyama brothers tied by fraying bonds (Yomiuri) |
| As siblings Yukio and Kunio Hatoyama make a most unusual pairing. Elder brother Yukio, 63--prime minister and president of the ruling Democratic Party of Japan--has been driven into a corner by his brother Kunio, 61, a former internal affairs and communications minister and a lawmaker of the opposition Liberal Democratic Party. The prime minister has denied his involvement in an alleged falsification of political donation reports and the receipt of a huge sum of money from his mother, maintaining that he "knew nothing whatsoever" of the matter. |
| Feb 19 | Japan, U.S. hold working-level talks over nuclear umbrella (AP) |
| Japan and the United States held working-level talks on the so-called U.S. nuclear umbrella over Japan in Washington on Thursday to discuss extended deterrence measures, a Defense Ministry spokesman said Friday. Satoshi Maeda, press secretary for the ministry, said senior Japanese foreign and defense ministry officials were given explanations on progress in the ongoing U.S. nuclear posture review that will establish the country's nuclear deterrence policy, strategy and force posture for the next five to 10 years. |