ABSTRACT
In addition to the necessity of updating the defence co-operative mechanism to take into account the changes in the security environment, it added an additional imperative for the Americans and Japanese to provide a new purpose for their alliance, making the United States military presence in Japan politically sustainable. The recasting of the Japanese-American alliance, which began in 1995 following the rape incident in Okinawa, culminated in three key documents giving a new sense of purpose to the agreement. It suggested that Hatoyama was trying to pull Japan away from a close alliance with the United States and re-orient Japanese foreign policy closer to China. In the meantime, Japan has been successful in modernising its alliance relationship with the United States, making it not only politically sustainable but also turning the defence relationship into a more practical one in which Japan plays a greater role.
