HONOLULU -- When Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi meets with U.S. President George W. Bush at the president's ranch in Texas this week, he will be speaking for a Japan that feels more threatened, this time by North Korea, than at any time since World War II.
Not even the danger from the Soviet Union during the four decades of the Cold War so troubled the Japanese as the perceived menace from North Korea.
Today that peril is causing the Japanese to shed the pacifist cocoon in which they wrapped themselves following the devastation of World War II, including the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. "Japan," said one writer, "is emerging from its slumber."