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U.S. Approves $1.5 Billion Ballistic Missile Defense Deal With Japan

-Two (2) AEGIS Weapon Systems (AWS) MK 7
-One (1) J7 AWS Computer Program
-Two (2) ship sets Multi-Mission Signal Processor (MMSP)
-Two (2) ship sets AN/MK8 MOD4 AEGIS Common Display System (CDS)
-Two (2) ship sets AN/SPQ-15 Digital Video Distribution System and Common Processor System (CPS)
-Two (2) ship sets AWS Computing Infrastructure MK 1 MOD4
-Two (2) ship sets Operational Readiness Test System (ORTS) hosted in AWS computing infrastructure
-Two (2) MK 99 MOD 8 Fire Control Systems
-Two (2) ship sets AN/SPG-62A Radar, Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) including Mission Planner blade server processors hosted in the CPS
-Two (2) Kill Assessment System/Weapon Data Recording Cabinets (KAS/WDRC) -Two (2) ship sets Mode 5/S capable Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) System
-Two (2) ship sets MK 36 MOD 6 Decoy Launching System
-Two (2) ship sets AN/SQQ-89A (V) 15 Underwater Surveillance and Communication System -Two (2) Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) Navigation systems with OE-553/U antenna
-Two (2) ship sets AN/SSN-6F (V) 4 Navigation Sensor System Interface (NAVSSI)
-Two (2) ship sets WSN-7(V) Inertial Navigation System (INS)
-Two (2) ship sets AN/URC-141(V) 3(C) Multifunctional Information Distribution System (MIDS) Radio Set
-Two (2) ship sets AN/UYQ-86(V) 6 Common Data Link Management System (CDLMS) -Two (2) ship sets AN/SQQ-89A (v) 15J UWS
-Two (2) ship sets Gigabit Ethernet Data Multiplex System (GEDMS)
-Two (2) ship sets Maintenance Assist Modules (MAMs) cabinets for Fire Control and Combat Systems equipment
-Two (2) ship sets Multi-Function Towed Array (MFTA) and associated OK-410(V)3/SQR handling equipment
-Two (2) ship sets of Vertical Launching System (VLS)
-MK41 components for Direct Commercial Sales (DCS) launcher to support BMD missions employing the Standard Missile 3 (SM-3)
-Two (2) ship sets Launch Control Units (LCU) MK 235 Mod 9 with Vertical Launching System (VLS) Global Positioning System (GPS) Integrator (VGI)
-VLS launcher components including twenty-four (24) MK 448 Mod 1 Motor Control Panel -Four (4) Programmable Power Supplies MK179 Mod 0
-Twenty-four (24) Launch Sequencers MK 5 Mod 1
-Four (4) Fiber Optic Distribution Boxes (FODB)
-Twenty-four (24) Single Module Junction Boxes
-Two (2) ship sets Gun Weapon System MK 34
-Two (2) ship sets MK 20 Electro-Optical Sensor System (EOSS)
-Two (2) ship sets of Cooperative Engagement Capability (CEC)
-Two (2) ship sets Global Command and Control System-Maritime (GCCS-M)
-Two (2) ship sets AN/SPQ-9B Radar
-Two (2) ship sets Enhanced AEGIS Combat Systems Trainer (ACTS) with communication suite -Two (2) ship sets technical documentation



Quite the shopping list. :)

Glad to know the deal was concluded without any obstacles.
 
It was 3.24 million in the FY14 budget

From: Standard Missile | SM-6 (RIM-174), SM-2 (RIM-66/67/156), Specs

"Price/Unit Cost: The unit cost of the SM-6 Block I RIM-174 Standard ERAM missile is $3.24 million per All-Up Round (in FY 2014)."


and it entered full-rate production 3 months ago so it is probably something like 2.5 million per missile now and the price is dropping everyday.
Production history
Manufacturer
Raytheon
Unit cost US$4.54m(FY2014)[4]
US$5.1m(FY2013) (inc R&D)[5]
Produced 2009-present
Number built 180
(1,800 planned)[6]

RIM-174 Standard ERAM - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


1 or 2 SM-6s per incoming missile once they are 200 miles out. Any leakers will be dealt with by the SM-2 Block 4s (which is under 500,000 USD each)

Enjoy!

I really want to see a real impact of SM and DF family.;)
 
And last i heard, 100% accuracy. :)

@AMDR @F-22Raptor , i doubt the accuracy of the DF-21. :)

The DF-21D has been discussed here ad nauseam, so all I will say is that CNO Adm. Greenert has previously stated that "we have extensive intelligence on the DF-21D", then further hinted that the US has developed the capability to sever the DF-21D's kill chain. My guess is this is through electronic warfare.
 
yet-unnamed class of guided missile destroyer (DDG) that is planned to join the Japanese fleet in the 2020s — currently referred to as the 27DD, according to a July story in Navy Recognition.


:)


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The DF-21D has been discussed here ad nauseam, so all I will say is that CNO Adm. Greenert has previously stated that "we have extensive intelligence on the DF-21D", then further hinted that the US has developed the capability to sever the DF-21D's kill chain. My guess is this is through electronic warfare.

:)
 
The system is integrated by US.
What Japan buys is only last level of the missile defense system.
The most important part of missile defense system, like early warning, missile tracing, are still in US hand.
Japan only receive order from US and prepare to fire.
China is building AEGIS system on its war ship.
China is also testing its own missile defense system. But mostly missile fired from land, not from AEGIS ships..

japan is building 2 more destroyers.
the aegis system is good but it should incorporate some Japanese equipment example the missiles. the US can see what japanese ship are seeing. the US even spied on japan!
isnt china building there own version of the aegis system

Frankly I doubt if SM-6 or SM2 can intercept ballistic missile effectively..
It is SM-3 that should do the job.
SM6 & SM2 are mainly targeting at planes and normal anti ship missiles..

DF-21D estimated cost: 5-7 Million USD

RIM-174A SM-6 Block I cost : 3 million USD
RIM-156A SM-2ER Block IV cost: 500,000 USD

By the way, the SM-6 and SM-2B4 were just tested against a ballistic missile in it terminal stage of flight. Both were successful intercepts. Both are currently deployed in the pacific. ;)

SM-6 intercepts first terminal phase ballistic missile - IHS Jane's 360
 
@Nihonjin1051 I sometimes feel that Japan has surrendered its foreign policy almost completely to the US-and I might add no country allied to US is doing well or wants the Americans there. Look at my Pakistan, used as a tool to fight their idiotic wars including support to dictator Zia Ul Haq to arm so called mujahideen and taliban only to see the pleasure of a soviet defeat. These terroristic animals are now drowning countries in blood.

I am surprised that as a country bombed with nuclear weapons during the war with the US, how do you justify having such a relationship with US. Have you really swallowed your pride. Are you not eager to demand justice for the 200000 killed in the hiroshima and nagasaki genocide and much more injured. There have been protests in Japan too against US military bases so some Japanese are still proud of their culture and know their actual enemy.

Furthermore this move by the US seems more to encircle china (as the deal with India proves) by vouching on their enemies. Asia must unite like Europe and keep the machinations of the barbarian superpower at bay. What u say Nihonjin?
You are surprised because you have medieval thinking. How far back do you want to go in holding a grudge/feud ? We can argue that for what Imperial Japan did to Asia, the A-bombs were cosmic justice. If you want to hold US morally condemnable for the A-bombs, would you be equally willing to hold Imperial Japan morally condemnable for what happened to Asia ? I doubt it. You have neither the intellectual capacity to debate the issue nor the moral backbone to hold Japan equally responsible because the crux of your participation in this debate is about US.

Today's democratic Japan is not yesterday's Imperial Japan. The people changed and in result they changed their society. You do not know the Japanese people as well as you think you do.
 
It is quite interesting to discuss how DF21D attack an US carrier and how US defense it.
But problem is when there is a need for attacking US carrier, it will be a huge war..
How to limit the war and avoid the war becoming WWIII or doom day of the world matters more.
It will be a political issue rather than military issue.

The DF-21D has been discussed here ad nauseam, so all I will say is that CNO Adm. Greenert has previously stated that "we have extensive intelligence on the DF-21D", then further hinted that the US has developed the capability to sever the DF-21D's kill chain. My guess is this is through electronic warfare.
 
It is quite interesting to discuss how DF21D attack an US carrier and how US defense it.
But problem is when there is a need for attacking US carrier, it will be a huge war..
How to limit the war and avoid the war becoming WWIII or doom day of the world matters more.
It will be a political issue rather than military issue.


The Commander of the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force, Admiral Tomohisa Takei, once commented that the DF-21 is easily dispatched by the JMSDF's current AEGIS capabilities and upgrade(s). Fleet Command will remain up to date to address and handle all threats with necessary countermeasures.
 
the key of missile defense is early warning, ballistic calculation and middle term interception.
AEGIS system can hardly intercept a ballistic missile without support of other system.
When single AEGIS detect the missile, the war head is about to reach ground and no time to react.
So in general, Japan does not have capacity to intercept ballistic missile.
Japan still need US for early warning and ballistic calculation

The Commander of the Japanese Maritime Self Defense Force, Admiral Tomohisa Takei, once commented that the DF-21 is easily dispatched by the JMSDF's current AEGIS capabilities and upgrade(s). Fleet Command will remain up to date to address and handle all threats with necessary countermeasures.
 
We have intercepted every test ballistic missile with 100% accuracy. That should be a message.
 
The system is integrated by US.
What Japan buys is only last level of the missile defense system.
The most important part of missile defense system, like early warning, missile tracing, are still in US hand.
Japan only receive order from US and prepare to fire.
China is building AEGIS system on its war ship.
China is also testing its own missile defense system. But mostly missile fired from land, not from AEGIS ships..



Frankly I doubt if SM-6 or SM2 can intercept ballistic missile effectively..
It is SM-3 that should do the job.
SM6 & SM2 are mainly targeting at planes and normal anti ship missiles..


Successful SM-6 Ballistic Missile Defense Test Set To Expand Capability of U.S. Guided Missile Fleet - USNI News

Successful SM-6 Ballistic Missile Defense Test Set To Expand Capability of U.S. Guided Missile Fleet

The U.S. Navy and the Missile Defense Agency has proved a modified Raytheon Standard Missile-6 (SM-6) missile can not only tackle cruise missiles and aircraft threats but also inbound ballistic missiles.

During a sea-based terminal ballistic missile defense (BMD) test at the Pacific Missile Range Facility (PMRF), Kauai, Hawaii, a SM-6 Dual I fired from guided missile destroyer USS John Paul Jones (DDG-53) successfully intercepted a ballistic missile target last week.

“This important test campaign not only demonstrated an additional terminal defense layer of the [ballistic missile defense system], it also proved the robustness of the multi-use SM-6 missile on-board a Navy destroyer,” said Missile Defense Agency director Vice Adm. James Syring in a Monday statement.

Subsequent tests over the next three days proved the SM-6 Dual I could also intercept and destroy aircraft and cruise missile threats.

While the Navy has long been able to use SM-2 Block IV for terminal ballistic missiles, however the SM-6 Dual I configuration adds the promise of traditional cruise missile and aircraft interdiction in the same package with a terminal ballistic missile defense interceptor.

The terminal phase “is the last opportunity to make an intercept before the warhead reaches its target. Intercepting a warhead during this phase is difficult and the least desirable of the phases because there is little margin for error and the intercept will occur close to the intended target,” read a description from MDA.

The modified SM-6 is slated to enter the fleet sometime next year.
“U.S. Navy commanders want both capability and flexibility to meet a wide variety of missions, and that’s exactly what SM-6 offers,” said Taylor W. Lawrence, president of Raytheon Missile Systems in a statement from the company.
“When it deploys next year, it will be the only missile in the world capable of both anti-air warfare and ballistic missile defense from sea.”

At the moment, the SM-6 terminal BMD capability is only inherent in the Navy’s upgraded and emerging guided missile ships with the Baseline 9 Aegis Combat System upgrade that provides enhanced processing power that would allow an Aegis ship to simultaneously track and target traditional air warfare threats like cruise missiles and aircraft as well as ballistic missiles.
 
Even US cannot guarantee that accuracy...
And the accuracy will be even lower if it is not a test missile but a real missile, that you do not know when and where it will be fired, how it is going to fly and where it is going to land.
All you have is a few minutes that before it lands..

We have intercepted every test ballistic missile with 100% accuracy. That should be a message.
 
Even US cannot guarantee that accuracy...
And the accuracy will be even lower if it is not a test missile but a real missile, that you do not know when and where it will be fired, how it is going to fly and where it is going to land.
All you have is a few minutes that before it lands..

Umm thats why you have radar for that. Early warning system you know?

Here it shows for example where and when it was launched.
 
Today's democratic Japan is not yesterday's Imperial Japan. The people changed and in result they changed their society. You do not know the Japanese people as well as you think you do.

yes the citizens changed, but the elite don't.

The Mirage that is Japan …

I came across an article in Asia Times on Japan’s WWII surrender that I thought was very well written. It is important because within that surrender lay the seeds of today’s historical revisionism. But more important than that, it is a good case study on what Japan is NOT.

Too often, many in the West think of Japan as this enlightened, modern, forward-looking, peace-loving society. But when the West seems to have misunderstood Japan’s nuanced and conditional surrender for a real unconditional one akin to Germany, then it is time to what Japan is in reality, and what Japan is headed to be.

Here I offer two articles, first as a context, and second as a case study.

First is that article in Asia Times on Japan’s WWII surrender.

August 1945: Japan’s Hirohito conceded, he did not surrender
By George Koo on August 4, 2015

Recently, Japan’s Imperial Household released a DVD set containing a re-mastered and digitized version of Emperor Hirohito’s speech that was recorded for national broadcast on the eve of Japan’s surrender thus ending WWII. The actual broadcast was made on Aug. 15, 1945 marking the official end of the war.

While the release of the improved quality of Hirohito’s speech was widely reported, I could not find any official explanation as to the reason for making this version available now. Presumably, it is part of Japan’s contribution to celebrate or commemorate or memorialize the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII, depending on one’s personal perspective.

Having now read the text of the Emperor’s speech, I have a better understanding of why the self-image of post-war Japan can be so vastly different from the view of Japan by others. I was a child in China during the war. If I grew up in Japan and heard the Emperor’s speech, I could easily have concluded that Japan was a victim of WWII. Nothing in his speech would suggest that Japan was the aggressor and guilty of provoking the devastating conflict.

The Japanese language is characterized by nuanced, indirect expressions. I recall reading one the old popular business books written to educate gaijins (foreigners) on the subtleties of communicating with the Japanese. The title was something like “Japanese have 16 ways of saying “no,”—none as simple as a straightforward no. Interacting with my Japanese friends, I found that they have many ways of expressing apology and regret but never with seamless candor.

Indeed, we can see by deconstructing the Emperor’s speech that “telling it like it is” is not in the Japanese make-up.

First, Hirohito said: “We have decided to effect a settlement of the present situation by resorting to an extraordinary measure.” What he meant was, “We have to surrender unconditionally.”

Next, he said, “We have ordered Our Government to communicate to the Governments of the United States, Great Britain, China and the Soviet Union that Our Empire accepts the provisions of their Joint Declaration.”

The Western powers interpret this statement to mean that the Emperor accepted the terms of unconditional surrender as outlined in the Potsdam Declaration. Yet can anyone expect the ordinary people in Japan to make the same connection from his speech, a speech where “surrender” and “Potsdam” were conspicuously absent? Thanks to the way post-war textbooks are written, most people in Japan have not even heard of Potsdam Declaration.

Then he said, “It being far from our thought either to infringe upon sovereignty of other nations or to embark upon territorial aggrandizement.” He obviously was not referring to Japan’s invasion and occupation of Manchuria as early as 1931 and certainly not the occupation of Korea since the latter part of 19th century.

And he said, “The war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage.” Certainly a masterful understatement under the trying circumstances he was facing.

Approaching the end of his speech, he said, “We cannot but express the deepest sense of regret to Our Allied nations of East Asia, who have consistently cooperated with the Empire towards the emancipation of East Asia.” This statement neatly encapsulated the myth of co-prosperity Japan used to justify invading and occupying East Asia countries.

The raping and pillaging as the Japanese troops moved into each country was for their own good, to free them from the shackles of white man domination. Politicians in Japan today continues to perpetuate the idea that Japan invaded rest of Asia for their own good, that the Japanese soldiers snatched the possessions from the local people in order to share the wealth with them.

The media simply adored the statement the Emperor made toward the end of his speech, “… to pave the way for a grand peace for all the generations to come by enduring the unendurable and suffering what is insufferable.” The poetic meter of the enduring and suffering tugged their heart strings and was often quoted and repeated in documentaries and films about the war.

Unfortunately, the context of that quote was to portray the hapless Japanese people as having to endure and suffer the post war trauma of a defeated nation — in others words, another reminder of Japan as a victim of WWII. The Emperor was certainly not referring to the Chinese people having to endure and suffer the eight years of the brutal occupation by the imperial troops before the war ended.

It’s customary for victors to write the history. Japan is proving to be the exception to the rule. Whether deliberate or simply inhibited by his cultural upbringing, the ambiguity of Emperor’s concession speech –certainly not a legitimate surrender proclamation — has allowed Japan to begin revising history. It’s as if denying all the brutalities committed in the past can exonerate the present from any collective guilt. Just the opposite is true. The people of Asia will continue to remind Japan until there is only one version of the tragic history of World War II.

Dear Lionel:

I refer to your public assurances that the Financial Times’s independence will not be compromised by the Nikkei takeover. You are misinformed. Frankly, I concur with the BBC’s economics editor Robert Peston who has tweeted that this is a “desperately sad” moment.

As you know, I have spent 27 years covering finance and economics from a base in Tokyo. It took a few years to get my bearings but eventually I began to piece together the real story. The truth has turned out in many crucial respects to be the opposite of what my previous reading of the Anglophone press had led me to expect.

For a start, Japan is not a pro-Western democracy. On the contrary it remains a bizarrely authoritarian society that in many respects is tacitly anti-Western. Much of what is presented in the West as democratic activity is merely Gilbertian theatrics. Indeed for an introductory guide to latter-day Japan’s age-old tradition of cast-of-thousands make-believe, you might usefully consult the libretto of W.S. Gilbert’s Mikado.

Critically for the future of the FT, in few areas of life is Japan’s otherness so pronounced as in the media. As the prominent British commentator Alex Brummer has pointedly asked, “do we really think that the editors and managers of Nikkei understand the values of independence of thought that distinguish British financial journalism?”

Not only is the Japanese press not free, but Japanese editors quietly rejoice in a role as principal apologists for the Japanese establishment, and in particular for an all-powerful, if virtually invisible, higher bureaucracy. When such editors attack Japanese companies, they are typically not acting autonomously but are merely performing their appointed role as pit bulls settling scores for the bureaucracy.

The “special” nature of Japanese journalistic ethics is readily appreciated if you ask yourself a few questions. When, for instance, did Nikkei last publish a serious account of Japan’s mercantilist trade policies? I am not aware that it has ever done so.

And where was Nikkei on the “ comfort women” sex slavery issue? Nowhere, of course. The issue was first raised in the Dutch press, which focused on the brutalization of brave Dutch women captured in the early 1940s in the then Dutch East Indies. The Dutch women were the tip of an iceberg but their allegations inspired East Asian victims (principally Koreans) finally to find their voice in pressing for an apology and compensation. The Japanese press was eventually embarrassed into breaking its silence but only after the story had become a cause célèbre in the West.

All this is the more piquant for the fact that the FT’s coverage of Japanese economics in recent decades has been remarkably naive. The FT has led the global press in presenting Japan as a basket case. In reality given its demographics, Japan has done remarkably well (more on the counterintuitive truth of Japan’s demographics in a moment).

In publicizing the basket-case story the FT has fallen for a characteristically brilliant Japanese propaganda initiative. Japanese officials see major advantages in pretending their nation is weak and dysfunctional. Certainly in the 1980s they learned the hard way that clear evidence of Japan’s success created a hornet’s nest of diplomatic problems. Most notably trade tensions with the United States became so explosive that a trade war seemed imminent. Meanwhile victims of imperial Japan’s World War II atrocities – and their families – began pushing in earnest for compensation (they had previously been fobbed off by claims that Japan was too poor to make amends). Then there were countless Third World nations begging for a share of Japan’s foreign aid budget. Finally there was the matter of the rising Japanese yen. As an exporting nation, Japan – like Germany – has consistently sought to keep its currency as undervalued as possible.

All these problems were quickly neutralized when, with the stock and real-estate crashes of the early 1990s, the basket case story took hold. For a nation noted for its capacity for make-believe, the message was clear: act out various routines that emphasized Japan’s weaknesses, real or imagined, and hid its strengths.

The strategy has proved spectacularly successful, not least in reining in American pressure for market opening. A chivalrous United States, faithful to the principle that you should not kick a man when he’s down, has not pressed Japan on trade in more than two decades. Yet the Japanese market remains as closed as ever. In the car industry, for instance, even Volkswagen, which is a match for Toyota in any other market, has yet to achieve more than a token presence. (No wonder therefore that with the benefit of big profits in a large sheltered home market, Japanese carmakers have out-invested most foreign competitors during the lost decades – so much so that the Japanese industry has almost doubled its unit output since 1989.)

All the doom notwithstanding, Japan is not only one of the world’s most prosperous nations but has made remarkable strides in recent decades. The point is obvious to foreign visitors the moment they arrive. For a start Japanese airports are state-of-the-art and invariably these days enjoy fast public transport links to downtown areas. Meanwhile the Japanese people are among the world’s best dressed and they drive some of the world’s best cars – in particular Lexuses and Infinitis that are a world away from the tinny little three-wheelers of the 1980s.



Japan’s continuing success in exporting is rarely alluded to in the Anglophone press. For details of how the Japanese have highly effectively targeted a host of “chokehold” industries (in advanced materials, key components, leading-edge production machinery), I commend you to my books, particularly Blindside and In Praise of Hard Industries.

What is not in doubt is that all through the lost decades Japan’s trade success – and consequent preeminence as a capital exporter – has financed an impressive array of foreign acquisitions. In the United Kingdom alone in the last few years we have seen such mega-deals as Hitachi’s $1.2 billion purchase of Horizon Nuclear Power and Olympus’s $2.2 billion purchase of Gyrus. Then there has been Sompo’s takeover of Canopius, Toshiba’s of NuGeneration, Dentsu’s of Aegis, and Brother’s of Domino. For a fuller list click here.

In many ways Nikkei’s $1.3 billion purchase of the FT is likely to be remembered as the most consequential of them all. The deal values the FT at a remarkable premium to earnings even by the highly inflated standards that have become common in recent years on the London stock market (particularly given that the FT’s headquarters building in central London is not included). Commentators have suggested that Nikkei is paying far too much. Actually from a Tokyo point of view, the deal is a steal. What the commentators fail to understand is that for Nikkei this is not about profits. Rather it is about power. Nikkei is fronting for the entire Japanese economic system in seeking to control one of the world’s most influential Anglophone news organizations.

There is much, much more that could be said. I hope at least I have convinced you that you need to take a closer a look at what a critical geopolitical development you are leading the United Kingdom into.

If on reflection you still feel confident you are doing the right thing, I would be happy to invite you to a public discussion in a prominent forum. The Royal Institute of International Affairs in London might be appropriate or perhaps the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington. As an inducement for you to come forward (and as an earnest of my confidence in my analysis), I will be happy to make a donation of $10,000 to your favorite good cause.

All the best,

Eamonn

This is a bold letter, and it contains many truths. Far from being a meek nation with an open vibrant civil society, Japan is more a conniving, scheming, powerful oligarchy that needs to be watched, if not feared.

In my own research on “freedom of speech” in Japan, I have come to learn that all is not what it appears to be Japan. For example, despite legal rhetoric, “freedom” in Japan is limited by its byzantine regulations and suffocating cultural norms. Just because you may be “free” to say what you please under the law (which in fact don’t mean much as the Japanese courts have never struck down any laws limiting freedom of speech in its post-war history – for more see e.g. link to “Critical Issues in Contemporary Japan” book below) doesn’t mean you have “freedom” of speech in Japan.

In my recent research, I am amazed to find how contrary to popular misbelief, modern Japan (post WWII) has always arrested reporters for publishing or digging too deep into sensitive political topics (see e.g. this article from Japan Times on a reporter’s experience relating to Okinawa’s recent “handover,” or a small excerpt from this book on contemporary Japan issues.) Its museums routinely shies away from displaying political art it disdains (see e.g. this Asahi article titled Fearing controversy, museums shy away from political art). Japan – as scholars have pointed out – is at most a “pseudo democracy.” Draconian control has always been an art in Japan (see also Negotiating Censorship in Modern Japan).

Even if one chose to blindly believe that post-war Japan is a shiny beacon of Asian democracy, it appears to be but a historical aberration made possible by a nation at peace, undergoing an unprecedented economic growth, with no external enemy, and whose security is 100% guaranteed by the world’s biggest military hegemony in history. As soon as it feels threatened – however indirectly and slightly – as it seems to have with the continuing rise of China and become more “normal,” it seems to be reverting to its innate authoritarian ways (see e.g. this Guardian article or this article in the Diplomat or this article in Japan Times or this or this article in the New York Times or this slightly older Asia Times article).

The world has been wrong about Japan for so long. It is time for the world to do a complete rethink on Japan – especially as Japan continues to vie to gain a leadership role in Asia. Purchases like Financial Times is but another tool for Japan to expand its power – in this case by seizing a platform to bend people’s norms and views.
 

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