Senior Vice Defense Minister Akihisa Nagashima has reached agreement with high-ranking members of the U.S. government to begin reviewing bilateral defense guidelines that define coordination between the Self-Defense Forces and the American military.
"We agreed Friday to hold strategic talks," Nagashima told reporters in Washington after holding separate meetings with U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and Kurt Campbell, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs.
Tokyo and Washington are arranging to launch a working-level meeting on updating the 1997 guidelines possibly as early as December, according to Japanese government sources.