Djibouti and beyond: Japan’s first post-war overseas base and the recalibration of risk in securing enhanced military capabilities

Having passed successive legislation in the past two decades to expand its use of the Japan Self Defense Force (JSDF), Japan has emerged from its post-war ‘pacifist’ shackles to assume a range of security roles that are typically associated with so-called ‘normal nations’. This article addresses how these have been crystallized in the form of an indefinitely-termed overseas base on the Horn of Africa, in Djibouti. Careful examination of pertaining Diet minutes, media discourse and government ministry papers suggests that the risks identified with this facility’s realization and status have been fundamentally recalibrated, allowing its presence and operational diversification to go largely unnoticed and unopposed – both domestically and overseas – despite representing a seemingly radical departure from common sense interpretations of Japan’s antimilitarist constitution

Okinawa Narratives: Delineating rhetoric, policy and agency

This article re-examines the often misrepresented role of Okinawan agency by focusing on the divergence between mainstream framings of Okinawa, actual policies directed towards the Ryūkyū Islands and the sociopolitical reality on these outlying islands. In so doing, it interrogates the various narratives of Okinawa and the key terms that have articulated them in the post-reversion era. It thereby adds explanatory power to extant structuralist and critical literatures, which have tended to suffer from monolithic descriptions of structural power and polemic approaches to American and Japanese governance of the islands. Specifically, by analyzing a series of illustrative issue areas such as sexual and economic exploitation, environmental protection and military security, the article uses an adapted form of critical discourse analysis (CDA) to trace how framings and policy have shifted since reversion to Japanese rule. This concentrates primarily on prime-ministerial statements from the National Diet and other, mostly Japanese-language, materials relating to Okinawa’s governance. These are contrasted with short case studies highlighting the disconnection between rhetoric and reality. Ultimately, the evidence points to a decoupling of mainstream narratives from the on-the-ground reality. The article thereby provides a nuanced understanding and expression of Okinawa’s complex interests and agency

Decentring the first island chain : Okinawa requires a recapitulation of security

As the "keystone" of the Pacific, Okinawa is set to become a flashpoint between dynamic great power rivalries that are shifting their focus towards the South and East China Seas across the Indo-Pacific region. Amid this, the islands' independent history, antimilitarist culture and wonderous potential are often misunderstood or deliberately misrepresented to serve the interests of would be policymakers in the security sphere. As such, this policy brief problematises how Okinawan issues are framed and responded to by leading theorists and practitioners in the field. In response, it is argued that a recapitulation of what amounts to effective security policy is needed. This should be initiated from a decentred perspective that is informed by a revitalised set of nuanced concepts. While still operating within the constraints of regional geopolitical competition that is dominated by realpolitik, these will constructively address socio-economic and environmental concerns

Nationalism in Okinawa:Futenma and the future of base politics

Extant scholarship has primarily tackled the MCAS Futenma base relocation case on Okinawa from specific scientific and economic disciplines, such as International Relations (IR) and Policymaking Studies. This paper, however. provides new research into the relationship between nationalism and localism, offering an original perspective that explains the combined interactive influences affecting the key issues. These include: the constraints and opportunities of the international system, the rhetoric used by political, commercial and societal stakeholders involved in policy direction, and the societal norms that embed shifting national and local interests into the policymaking process. Concretely, it explicates to what extent intersecting key actors disputing the Futenma relocation issue on Okinawa adhere to Japan's national norms of (US_allied) bilateralism, (anti)militarism and developmentalism - and how policy is shaped in accordance with such. The research findings offer a deeper understanding of how Japan's domestic and foreign policies stem from the development and change of intersecting nationalist and localised discourses. The article focuses specifically on how nationalism is used as a means of articulating power in governance at local and national levels. Additional explanatory power is also provided through a refined explication of how nationalism itself undergoes processes of contestation in order to be utilized politically. Insights gained from the project provide an aid to policy creation and opposition in specific response to the pressing issues associated with construction of the new base at Henoko, as well as developing academic research beyond its established theoretical and empirical paramete

Severe hypertension and flushing in a patient with a non-metastatic carcinoid tumour

A case of multiple endocrine adenopathy type I associated with a solitary carcinoid tumour is described. During anaesthesia the characteristic syndrome consisting of hypertension, tachycardia and flushing occurred. The possible mechanisms for this are discussed.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/72985/1/j.1365-2044.1982.tb00995.x.pd

Benchmarking 2D hydraulic models for urban flood simulations

This paper describes benchmark testing of six two-dimensional (2D) hydraulic models (DIVAST, DIVASTTVD, TUFLOW, JFLOW, TRENT and LISFLOOD-FP) in terms of their ability to simulate surface flows in a densely urbanised area. The models are applied to a 1·0 km × 0·4 km urban catchment within the city of Glasgow, Scotland, UK, and are used to simulate a flood event that occurred at this site on 30 July 2002. An identical numerical grid describing the underlying topography is constructed for each model, using a combination of airborne laser altimetry (LiDAR) fused with digital map data, and used to run a benchmark simulation. Two numerical experiments were then conducted to test the response of each model to topographic error and uncertainty over friction parameterisation. While all the models tested produce plausible results, subtle differences between particular groups of codes give considerable insight into both the practice and science of urban hydraulic modelling. In particular, the results show that the terrain data available from modern LiDAR systems are sufficiently accurate and resolved for simulating urban flows, but such data need to be fused with digital map data of building topology and land use to gain maximum benefit from the information contained therein. When such terrain data are available, uncertainty in friction parameters becomes a more dominant factor than topographic error for typical problems. The simulations also show that flows in urban environments are characterised by numerous transitions to supercritical flow and numerical shocks. However, the effects of these are localised and they do not appear to affect overall wave propagation. In contrast, inertia terms are shown to be important in this particular case, but the specific characteristics of the test site may mean that this does not hold more generally

安倍政権の対北朝鮮政策:「国難」言説の政治学

Amid rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula, the Abe government dissolved the House of Representatives in September 2017, declaring a ‘national crisis’ and pointing to Japan’s inadequate postwar defence capabilities. Since returning to power in 2012, Abe has pledged to ‘overcome Japan’s post-war system’. To achieve this, he has focused on the North Korean issue to strengthen Japan’s defence capabilities and achieve the conservatives’ long-term goal of revising the pacifist postwar constitution. This paper explains the origins of the narrative linking the ‘North Korean threat’ and ‘national crisis’ discourses and its close relationship with political discourses arguing for the transformation of the postwar Japanese state. It examines the Abe administration's diplomacy towards the Korean Peninsula, focusing on the 'abduction issue' as a major crisis for Japan

Modelling the natural history of Huntington's disease progression.

BACKGROUND: The lack of reliable biomarkers to track disease progression is a major problem in clinical research of chronic neurological disorders. Using Huntington's disease (HD) as an example, we describe a novel approach to model HD and show that the progression of a neurological disorder can be predicted for individual patients. METHODS: Starting with an initial cohort of 343 patients with HD that we have followed since 1995, we used data from 68 patients that satisfied our filtering criteria to model disease progression, based on the Unified Huntington's Disease Rating Scale (UHDRS), a measure that is routinely used in HD clinics worldwide. RESULTS: Our model was validated by: (A) extrapolating our equation to model the age of disease onset, (B) testing it on a second patient data set by loosening our filtering criteria, (C) cross-validating with a repeated random subsampling approach and (D) holdout validating with the latest clinical assessment data from the same cohort of patients. With UHDRS scores from the past four clinical visits (over a minimum span of 2 years), our model predicts disease progression of individual patients over the next 2 years with an accuracy of 89-91%. We have also provided evidence that patients with similar baseline clinical profiles can exhibit very different trajectories of disease progression. CONCLUSIONS: This new model therefore has important implications for HD research, most obviously in the development of potential disease-modifying therapies. We believe that a similar approach can also be adapted to model disease progression in other chronic neurological disorders.This study was supported by the Cotswold Trust, the Rosetrees Trust, donations to the Huntington’s disease clinic in the John van Geest Centre for Brain Repair, and NIHR award of the Biomedical Research Centre - Cambridge University NHS Foundation Trust. This project was also supported by EPSRC through projects EP/I03210X/1 and EP/G066477/1.This article has been accepted for publication in Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry, following peer review. The definitive copyedited, typeset version J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry doi:10.1136/jnnp-2014-308153 is available online at: http://jnnp.bmj.com/content/early/2014/12/16/jnnp-2014-308153.long