Japan takes another step away from post-war pacifism
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TOKYO  - Japan has taken another step away from its post-World War II pacifism with the ending of its decades-old ban on military exports and telling defense planners to regard China and North Korea as potential threats.
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The crisis is a political challenge for Koizumi, who decided to send Japanese troops to Iraq despite strong public opposition. &quot;We cannot tolerate terrorism and we will not give in to terrorism,&quot; Koizumi told reporters on Wednesday.
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Japan's deep internal divide over its wartime history shows little sign of narrowing after the government compromised on school textbook references to military involvement in mass suicides in Okinawa in 1945.
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Japanese politicians played down Sunday the significance of a US proposed resolution demanding Japan apologise over use of sex slaves, many of them Chinese and Korean women, during World War II.
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A majority of Japanese want their government to get tougher with China and North Korea as support for Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has dipped, an opinion poll showed.
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Japan, under diplomatic fire for appearing to sidestep responsibility for forcing women to act as wartime sex slaves for its soldiers, said on Wednesday that the government stood by a 1993 apology acknowledging coercion.
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Chinese President Hu Jintao asked Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi to stop visiting a war shrine in Tokyo that China and other Asian nations say symbolizes Japan&#39;s militaristic past, a Japanese official said.
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Japan&#39;s new defense outline tears down geographic constraints on missions of the Self-Defense Forces and allows troops to land in any country to fight a potential terrorist threat.
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Japan has decided to ease a blanket ban on arms exports to open the way for joint production of a new missile shield with the United States but says it will continue to refrain from most other weapons exports.
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The Japanese government says it is undeterred in its fight against terrorism, following the killing of a Japanese hostage in Iraq.
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Negotiating with North Korea is rarely anything but bumpy. But in recent months, Japan once got close to getting Pyongyang&#39;s commitment to rejoin the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT)-but Tokyo blew it.
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The United States has rejected a request by Japan that it verify Tokyo's contribution to the US-led "war on terror" in Afghanistan is not used for military operations in Iraq, a report said Sunday.
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Japan denounces a US resolution calling on Tokyo to apologise over wartime sex slaves.
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Japan unveils a new defence policy, including a bigger role in global military cooperation.
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Japanese officials rushed on Friday to dismiss suggestions that the emperor overstepped his authority and meddled in government affairs by voicing his opposition to Tokyo schools' policy of compulsory patriotism.
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North Korea has warned Japan that any sanctions against the communist state would be regarded as a declaration of war. Opinion polls show about two-thirds of the Japanese public supporting
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Japan should revise its pacifist,  U.S.-drafted constitution so that the world's second-biggest  economy can play a greater security role abroad, Foreign  Minister Nobutaka Machimura said on Tuesday.