Word: koizumi
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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Trouble is, it's all about politics too. Last week, just hours before Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi met at Camp David with George W. Bush, Okinawa saw the type of ugly incident that happens there with depressing regularity--becoming, once again, a tawdry pivot in the complex relationship between the U.S. and Japan. A woman in her 20s told police that a foreigner raped her early Friday morning in the parking lot of a shopping mall in Chatan, not far from the Kadena base. Details of the alleged crime are sketchy, but for several hours police questioned...
...nowhere else quite so convenient. Okinawa suits American purposes because of its proximity to the Korean peninsula and the rest of Asia. From the standpoint of the government in Tokyo, keeping so many American troops in Okinawa makes sense; that way they are segregated from the Japanese mainland. Koizumi has said, however, that he wants to "lighten the burden" on the island. Japanese have paid rapt attention to the debate on the U.S. bombing range in Vieques, Puerto Rico, and to Washington's decision to close the range in 2003. But the chances of such a dispensation for Okinawa...
...military activity--was at the top of the Camp David agenda. The current Japanese government is less pliant than its predecessors; Tokyo has said only that it "understands" the Bush Administration's plans for an antiballistic missile shield and has hinted it might develop its own missile defense. Koizumi, who enjoys enormous popular support, has rattled neighbors by displaying a nationalistic streak. He plans to visit a controversial shrine where convicted war criminals are memorialized, and he has refused to prohibit the publication of textbooks that whitewash Japan's war aggression. Koizumi favors rejiggering the American-inspired constitution, which renounces...
...always. Last week, just 36 hours before Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi was to meet at Camp David with U.S. President George W. Bush for the first time, Okinawa suffered the type of ugly incident that happens with depressing regularity?becoming, once again, one of the most tricky points in the complex relationship between the U.S. and Japan. Early Friday morning, a woman in her twenties told police that a foreigner raped her in a parking lot of a shopping mall not far from the Kadena base. Police later said they had identified a U.S. Air Force technical sergeant...
...geography, suits American purposes because it is near the Korean peninsula and the rest of Asia. It suits Tokyo's in two ways: the U.S. presence reduces Japan's need for fielding its own army, and it segregates a substantial portion of the American military machine from the mainland. Koizumi said in a recent speech in Okinawa that he wanted to "lighten the burden" on the island, and former President Bill Clinton last summer suggested the U.S. would reduce the size of America's "footprint" on Okinawa. But the new Administration in Washington maintains that Asia is its main security...