HONOLULU -- Much recent U.S. strategic thinking about Asia has focused on China or the prospect of a nuclear-armed North Korea. These concerns have overshadowed important changes in Japan that have been influenced in part by developments in those two countries.
Transformation in Japan as well as changes occurring elsewhere in the region and in the U.S. add entirely new meaning to former U.S. Ambassador Mike Mansfield's mantra: "The Japan-U.S. relationship is the most important bilateral relationship, bar none."
The 1990s were tumultuous for Japan. The decade was marked by trade conflicts with the U.S., regional security crises -- the first North Korean nuclear crisis, the 1995 rape of an Okinawa schoolgirl by U.S. servicemen, the 1996 Taiwan Strait crisis, the 1998 overflight of a Taepodong test missile and North Korean spy-boat incursions -- and doubts about the solidity of the alliance with the United States.