Backtracking on his earlier statements, Japan’s celebrity academic argued that terms like “mass suicide” and “mass seppuku” were intended as “abstract metaphors.”
Global defense cooperation is needed to address mounting security challenges, as the future of the rules-based international order is at stake, warned the secretary general.
Japan sent fighter jets to monitor a Chinese aircraft carrier that, together with warships, has been carrying out operations near the Pacific nation’s waters.
This change for Japan, which had renounced the right to wage war and had adopted a stance of military non-involvement in international disputes, illustrates how much the geopolitical reality has changed in recent years.
The Japanese are famously split over the issue, which conjures up fears of an ultra-nationalist (if not imperialist) element rearing its head again—and gaining entrance to real power.
