It was announced today that Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama is resigning his post most likely due to his failure to uphold is promise to remove the US military presence from Okinawa. He did try to address the issue but ultimately decided that the base would stay. It's a reasonable question to consider if he made the decision due to pressure from the US, Japanese security concerns, or concerns specific to conditions on Okinawa itself.
The US Military Presence on Okinawa is very extensive. According to wikipedia there are 14 seperate installations covering 233 sq. km, which is about 18% of the main island. Of the 40,000 US personnel stationed in Japan, around 2/3 are on Okinawa. The overwhelming majority of Okinawans are opposed to the military presence due to environmental and noise concerns, occasional crime by US servicemen, and other such factors. I can hardly blame them... From the numbers above it would seem like you'd be hard pressed to look anywhere without seeing the US military.
Does it make sense to move the military assets? Probably does. The US has interest in military presence in Japan for geographic reasons... Japan commands a lot of the access to the Pacific from the Asian side. Japanese interest lies in the US military presence reducing their own expenditure on defense to an extremely low level. Okinawa also has some interest in the presence, I think, as I'd imagine the troops contribute a fair amount to their economy (though I don't really know that for sure). Finally, all parties should be keenly interested in maintaining one of the world's most important military alliances, so some solution should be found. It seems to me like the military assets should be redistributed to other parts of Japan (or throughout the Pacific Theatre). Based on Okinawa's location, it's probably important maintain an airbase there, but it seems to me like the rest of the bases could go.
Showing posts with label Japan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Japan. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Monday, May 24, 2010
Triumphant Return from The Japans
I'm back, even if some of you didn't know I'd gone! I took a business trip for my huge corporate employer to Japan over the last week. I didn't have a lot of warning that I was going which is why I didn't post a "see ya's all later kinda blog" before heading out. I even made a weak effort between the very long working days and numerous drinkings of Japanese beer to update the blog with an "I'm in Japan!!!!" kinda post, but was defeated by the intermittent wireless in the hotel.
Anyway, for what it's worth, I've been to Japan several times (including a year-long stint as a college exchange students), so it's a place I'm pretty familiar with... I like it there a lot and enjoy any chance to go that I can get. This trip took me to Kobe, a small city on Shikoku, and a smaller industrial city near Nagoya (or maybe more accurately near Toyota). I had been to Kobe (maybe known to you as the site of the devastating Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995) once before during high school for a volleyball tournament, and I think that's probably when I started my love affair with things Japanese that resulted in my aforementioned college exchange there-- interestingly enough, I don't recall discussing the earthquake much or noticing a lot of damage or anything, even though I was there around one year later. Kobe is a pretty cool city with some neat features (the Ijinkan-- barbarian houses-- left over from when Kobe was a trade port for early European traders are an example) and some cool places to hang out.
I got to travel with three other guys, who all turned out to be decent travel companions. Work travel in Japan was fairly fascinating as factories there are very different from our own. There's a ton of automation, and the Japanese are able to cram a decent process into an unbelievably tiny space. Supplier relationships are also executed in a very different way-- kind of paternalistic and definitely not arms length. I think there's some things we could learn from each other.
This blog has been brought to you by mild jetlag, which saw me awake at ~4:30 AM and has given me a bit of extra time before work.
Anyway, for what it's worth, I've been to Japan several times (including a year-long stint as a college exchange students), so it's a place I'm pretty familiar with... I like it there a lot and enjoy any chance to go that I can get. This trip took me to Kobe, a small city on Shikoku, and a smaller industrial city near Nagoya (or maybe more accurately near Toyota). I had been to Kobe (maybe known to you as the site of the devastating Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995) once before during high school for a volleyball tournament, and I think that's probably when I started my love affair with things Japanese that resulted in my aforementioned college exchange there-- interestingly enough, I don't recall discussing the earthquake much or noticing a lot of damage or anything, even though I was there around one year later. Kobe is a pretty cool city with some neat features (the Ijinkan-- barbarian houses-- left over from when Kobe was a trade port for early European traders are an example) and some cool places to hang out.
I got to travel with three other guys, who all turned out to be decent travel companions. Work travel in Japan was fairly fascinating as factories there are very different from our own. There's a ton of automation, and the Japanese are able to cram a decent process into an unbelievably tiny space. Supplier relationships are also executed in a very different way-- kind of paternalistic and definitely not arms length. I think there's some things we could learn from each other.
This blog has been brought to you by mild jetlag, which saw me awake at ~4:30 AM and has given me a bit of extra time before work.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)