Sugoi! I Made the Japan Times

May 26, 2008 Black Tokyo

Wow! I was pleased to see that my response, "Let the SDF Deploy Overseas," to an Opinion Editorial (Op Ed) piece in the Japan Times was published in the Readers in Council section on Sunday, May 25, 2008. I decided last month to not only dedicate more time to finishing off the dragon a.k.a. "my book" but to write for a broader audience. I will take this as a good start.

I was also very happy to find out that a magazine in Paris wants to do a story on me and Black Tokyo for their upcoming edition. The story will present Black Tokyo to a broader demographic since the magazine is distributed in Paris, Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya, Kyoto, Hong Kong, Auckland, New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New Haven, various parts of the U.K., Milano, Rome, and Sweden.

Here is the link to my response. As always, I welcome any feedback (good or bad)! The introduction to my response is posted below:

"Craig Martin's May 21 article, "Permanent SDF overseas deployment law endangers democracy," was an extreme pleasure to read, although I do not agree with everything in it.

It's 2008 and Japan has the second strongest military force in Asia, continues to spend 1 percent of its GDP on defense, has acquired some pretty neat military toys (and sells a few using a broad interpretation of "aid"), has redeployed newer fighter aircraft to its base in Okinawa, wants to acquire the F-22 Raptor, and will have a few helicopter "carriers" that will allow the Self-Defense Forces to project their "defense" closer to China." (click the link above for the rest of the article)