Last month in Hawaii I attended a speech titled "Japan's New National Security Strategy in the Making" by a Dr. Shinichi Kitaoka. A scholar and university president, Dr. Kitaoka is deputy chairman of the "Advisory Panel on Reconstruction of the Legal Basis for Security" within the Shinzo Abe administration.
I sat in because I wanted to see how a representative of Japan's government would explain away Abe's militaristic views to an American audience.
Kitaoka did not disappoint. He was smooth. In impeccable English, to a packed room including numerous members of Hawaii's military brass, he sold a vision of a remilitarizing Japan without a return to a prewar militarized Japan. (You can see the entire speech at vimeo.com/77183187.)