In the most sweeping re-examination of the US-Japan security alliance in years, Japan and the US are negotiating a military realignment that could move some or all of the nearly 20,000 Marines off the crowded island of Okinawa, close underused bases and meld an army command in Washington state with a camp just south of Tokyo.
But something even more fundamental may be at stake.
Washington appears to be trying to use the talks to nudge Japan out from under the US security blanket and make Tokyo a much more active player in global strategic operations.
"The United States wants Japan to assume a role very much like the one it has vis-a-vis the British," said Tetsuo Maeda, professor of arms reduction and security at Tokyo International University. "The Self Defense Forces would be regularly deployed overseas for military operations if this kind of realignment were realized."
It would not be an easy transition if the realignment is approved.
America's force of 50,000-plus troops in Japan dates back decades and has long been hailed as the key to stability in the Asian-Pacific region and a model of co-operation. In exchange for the security the US troops provide, Japan pays a whopping US$5 billion, an arrangement unparalleled anywhere else in the world.
But amid calls in Japan for the US to streamline its presence, and Washington's shifting focus from maintaining bases abroad to fine-tuning its deployments to respond quickly to specific flare-ups, topics are on the table that were long seen as virtually taboo.
Officially, there has been little comment.
"We are working very hard right now," Lieutenant General Bruce Wright, said recently in his first news conference since assuming command of the US Forces Japan in February. He said details of the talks will likely emerge this summer, though no deadline has been announced.
Few expect Japan to see the kind of drastic restructuring and downsizing that the US forces in South Korea and Germany are going through. Wright stressed he did not expect a great change -- up or down -- in the overall number of troops here.
Their footprint may change substantially, however.
Wright acknowledged topics being discussed include relocation of Marine Corps Air Station Futenma, a major cause of friction on Okinawa; possible joint use of Yokota Air Base on Tokyo's western outskirts where US Forces are headquartered; and integration of command functions for the army's 1st Corps at Fort Lewis in Washington state with Camp Zama, just south of Tokyo.
According to reports in the Japanese media, based on anonymous government leaks, the idea has even been floated of moving the biggest contingent of marines based permanently outside the US from southern Okinawa to Japan's other extreme, the northern island of Hokkaido.
Reports have also speculated that the fighter wing of the USS Kittyhawk's battle group may be uprooted and sent south.
Ahead of a set of meetings in Hawaii this weekend, Defense Agency chief Yoshinori Ono said the future of unused or underused facilities would be discussed. But officials on both sides refuse to comment on specifics, saying only that a broad range of proposals are being considered and no final decisions have been made.
Wright said whatever changes come out of the talks will not weaken the US' military readiness in Asia.
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