Japanese military

Japanese Defense Minister Minoru Kihara said at a press conference that Japan only accepted U.S. aid after the earthquake while rejecting aid from other countries due to difficulties in reaching an agreement on how the aid would be delivered, reports Kyodo.

Tragedy struck Japan as a powerful earthquake measuring 7.6 on the Richter scale claimed the lives of at least 48 individuals in the first hours of the New Year, according to BBC reports. The quake's epicenter was located in Ishikawa Prefecture, prompting immediate response efforts and warnings from the Japan Meteorological Agency, which later canceled tsunami alerts.

North Korea’s state-run TV channel has revealed footage of Tuesday morning’s missile launch over Japan.
The announcement claimed that firing the missile was “the first step” of Pyongyang’s military operations in the region and repeated threats against the US territory of Guam, which it branded “an advanced base of invasion”.

The Japanese soldiers jumped out of the jeeps, unloaded the antitank missiles and dropped to the ground. Within minutes, they aimed and fired, striking hypothetical targets nearly a half-mile away.

South Korea and Japan reached a landmark agreement on Dec. 28 on the thorny issue of wartime sex slaves that has long soured relations, with Tokyo offering survivors a one-billion yen payment.

Japan will boost its spending for U.S. forces stationed there by 1.4 percent for the next five years, the Japanese government said on Dec. 16, supporting the U.S. military's Asian presence in the face of a rising China. 

Japan warned Oct. 12 that it might pull funding for UNESCO to protest last week's decision to inscribe documents related to the Nanjing massacre in its Memory of the World register.

Japan marked the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II (and its unconditional surrender) on Saturday, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe avoiding a controversial visit to the Yasukuni shrine, which honors several war criminals along with the multitudes of other fallen Japanese.

According to AP, Abe instead prayed and laid flowers at a national cemetery for unnamed fallen soldiers.