Japan Rearmed

Modern Japan is not only responding to threats from North Korea and China but is also reevaluating its dependence on the United States, Sheila Smith shows. No longer convinced they can rely on Americans to defend their country, Tokyo's political leaders are now confronting the possibility that they may need to prepare the nation's military for war.

Sheila A. Smith is John E. Merow Senior Fellow for Asia-Pacific Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and author of Intimate Rivals: Japanese Domestic Politics and a Rising China. She is chair of the US advisors to the US-Japan Conference on Cultural and Educational Interchange and is a frequent media commentator on East Asian affairs.