Nipponica

Operations at Hawaii’s Hilo International Airport were halted when security screeners spotted two items that looked like grenades in a bag belonging to a man from Japan.

Officers evacuated the terminal area Tuesday morning while a bomb squad determined the grenades were inert, according to a Hawaii Police Department statement. Airport operations resumed about an hour later.

Nothing to declare, apparently.

While Japan can never become an official member of the regional alliance, its participation in the organization's activities and cooperation with its member states is increasingly important as it develops its defense capacity.

There are limits to Japan's partnership with NATO. The organization cannot come to the defense of Japan, even if it were to enter conflict with Russia, China, or North Korea. But NATO's member states, especially the U.S., could certainly support Japan with military and nonmilitary support, if necessary. Beyond the mutual defense agreement of the NATO treaty (Article 5), there are other aspects of the treaty that allow for institution building and capacity training between NATO, its members and Japan.

This is a good explainer article about how Japan fits into the western security umbrella and how it could come to the nation’s aid in the event of conflict.

It's often said in discussions about United States military bases in Okinawa and related issues that Japan is subordinate to the U.S. and lacks sovereignty. As someone who has never lived in a town hosting a U.S. base, this reporter had always thought that the blatant ruler-subordinate style of relationship under the postwar occupation had lifted.

It's been four years since I happened to witness a certain episode and began researching the activities of U.S. military aircraft above the Tokyo metropolitan region. Looking back, I think my previous views were naive.

Good article highlighting Oba's reporting over the past few years about US helicopter flights over Tokyo. These things need to be said out loud.

“Obviously, you got to let the criminal justice process play out. But that doesn’t mean you don’t express on a human level your sense of regret.”

“We have to do better,” he said, adding that the US military’s high standards and protocols for education and training of its troops was “just not working”.

Emanuel said the US may be able to propose measures to improve training and transparency with the public at US-Japan foreign and defence ministers’ security talks expected later this month in Tokyo.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is scheduled to hold a summit meeting with Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand on Thursday on the sidelines of a NATO summit, which is set to begin Tuesday in Washington, a U.S. government official said Friday.

NATO and the four countries are expected to discuss cyber affairs, countermeasures against false information and Ukraine aid, while keeping China and Russia in mind.

An entire set of Hiroshige’s colorful depictions of his native city was bound into a book, donated to the Brooklyn Museum and left in storage for 40 years before being unbound in the 1970s. Because it was probably intended especially for such a collection, this particular set was also a kind of luxury edition, made with extra care and details, like the use of reflective metallic dust, that ordinary consumer-grade prints, for all their intricacy, didn’t have.

Bit of a drive from Asia but if you are in the New York area, it is a must-see.

Alarmed by a new security deal between Russia and North Korea, Japan is poised to bolster its defensive alliances and ramp up multinational military drills in the months ahead – though analysts doubt the Moscow-Pyongyang pact will significantly alter Tokyo’s defence spending or posture.

The wall is getting stronger against the Russian sphere both in Europe and now in East Asia. This is either some kind of 8-dimensional chess by Putin or really grasping at the final straws.

Naha prosecutors have indicted a U.S. Air Force member in Okinawa Prefecture for allegedly sexually assaulting and kidnapping a girl under the age of 16 in December, local authorities said Tuesday, with this latest incident involving military personnel likely to further inflame local opposition to their presence.

Unless the current situation in which Okinawa is forced to make sacrifices on the grounds of security is changed, the rift between the central and prefectural governments will only deepen. The national government must amend its stance of forcing decisions on Okinawa and engage in sincere dialogue.

This is a good explainer about the burden placed on Okinawa Prefecture by the central government and how the local people are basically powerless to stop it.

Gen. Eric Smith, commandant of the U.S. Marine Corps, told Nikkei on Friday that a new unit established in November on the Japanese island of Okinawa is designed to "counter PRC [the People's Republic of China] aggression" in order to protect Japan and others in geopolitically sensitive areas.

"It's designed to provide long-range sensing and long-range fire, using mobile missile batteries that are capable of striking adversaries' ships in the strategic sea lines of communication," Smith said in an interview in Washington, adding the unit's purpose is "to protect the Japanese home islands, in order to protect the Philippines, in order to protect [South] Korea."

So, assuming this new unit (stated in the article to be comprised of 2,000 troops) is new deployments to Okinawa, the planned relocation of other US military stated for December will be quickly replaced in this new initiative. The circle of life continues.