Diplomacy and Security in the Twenty-first Century

The sorts of issues we identify as security problems today will persist well into the twenty-first century and will continue to be major concerns for Japan's government and people, though the vocabulary with which we discuss them may change. The very term we now use for “security” in Japanese—anzen hoshō—has not been current all that long. Previously people generally used terms like “national defense” (kokubō) “defense of the empire” (teikoku no bōei), and even “empire building” (teikoku no kensetsu).