Welcome to the War on the Rocks podcast covering strategy, defense, and foreign affairs. My name is Nicholas Danforth. I'm an editor with War on the Rocks.

And I'm delighted to be here today in Tokyo sitting down with two of Japan's leading national security experts.

I'm joined by Saturo-Mori, professor at Kao University, where he also is the Deputy Director of the KEO Center for Strategy.

He's also Senior Fellow at Nakasone Institute and a former official at the Foreign Ministry.

I'm also joined by Yasuizumikaya,

professor at the School of Politics, Economics, and Communication

at Ayoyama Gackween University.

Thank you both for joining me this morning.

Well, thank you.

Thank you.

So we're going to cover honestly as much as possible in the half an hour or so we have.

But I wanted to start by asking you to give us and our listeners a brief overview of what going on I guess almost a year on the impact of

last December's national defense strategy has been.

This is the Toru Mori. Thank you very much for having me today. It's a real pleasure to be able to be on this podcast.

With regard to Japan's national defense strategy, I think most it came out together with the national security strategy which is an

overarching strategy that covers not only defense but also economic and others

other means to achieve national security I think in terms of implementation we are at the early

stages so one of the major tasks for the Japan Self-Defense Force right now is to sort of

improve its readiness.

One of the major shortfalls in Japan Self-Defense Force

is that it's short in parts and also in terms of operational temple.

And some, there has been reporting saying that the level of

...