The last time Japan "grew up," it sneak bombed Pearl Harbor, ravaged Northeast and Southeast Asia, and invented the kamikaze (the predecessor of the modern suicide bomber).
You live in a dry, wooded area and your neighbor is lighting bottle rockets and sending them over your property.
You would have to be flat-out-nuts not to be making it real clear his actions are not going to be tolerated.
Watch what happens after Shintaro Abe becomes Prime Minister in September. He's a Reaganite Conservative. He's the odds' on favorite to replace Kouizumi later this year.
Japan is the wild-card in that area, and I think they're at their breaking point with this mafia midget in north korea.
Japan can be our ace in the hole vs. China. Very few cultures have produced a population with as much intelligence and ability.
This guy makes a number of assumptions not the least of which is that the Japanese have simply abandoned centuries of tradition and belief and can now be completely trusted to exercise military power responsibly. I have no idea how they will exercise military power. I believe they have the technology to rival our own military if they wish and that they can become a nuclear power very quickly. I also believe that once they have this power we can only hope they will exercise it prudently and as an ally because once they have it we challenge it at our peril. The last 60 years may be enough to uproot all those ancient beliefs and traditions. But the Japan is not the U.S. and they have their own ideas and ideals and may discover they also have old ambitions that need only the hope of fulfillment to reawaken.
They may be just as surprised as we are that he's gone this far off the deep end.
Things must be really bad if he needs open warfare (or the threat thereof) to prevent his overthrow. Few things will distract an adult from realizing that s/he has no job, no hope, and no food for his/her starving children... but war will do it.