For a country with a constitution "forever renouncing war" (Article 9), Japan spends an awful lot of money on its military. In 2005 it was the fifth largest military spender in the world. And now there is the unsettling news that Japan is expanding its powerful self-defense capability into space.
A bill allowing the use of space for defense purposes looks certain to be passed during the current session of the Diet. My first thought on this was that Japan wanted a sort of "Star Wars" defense system like that envisaged by former U.S. President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, and that indeed is what the Japanese Communist Party fears and one of the reasons they voted against the bill last week.
With North Korea testing ballistic missiles in Japanese airspace, I have some sympathy with the Japanese desire for technology of this kind.