TOKYO - Japan is a prominent player in the strategic calculus of the two great powers, the United States and China, with Tokyo effectively acting as Washington's lieutenant in the region as a fellow democracy and security ally.

This is against the flashpoint of Taiwan. The Economist magazine in April described the island as the "most dangerous place on Earth". A month later, panellists told a Nikkei forum that the Taiwan Strait posed the gravest threat to regional security.