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Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and his government have implemented bold defence, diplomatic and economic policies against the challenges to the status quo order posed by Russia's invasion of Ukraine and increased Chinese assertiveness. What do these policies unveil about Japan's strategy and response to the transformed strategic environment? This article argues that the Kishida government has upgraded Japan to a front-line guardian of the status quo order. To achieve its front-line role, the Kishida government has consolidated Japan's deterrence policy, namely focusing on two main pillars—military and rules. To ensure Japan's frontline role is sustainable, this policy paper makes three recommendations: Japan must develop strategic clarity and clear operational plans on how to respond to a regional contingency, such as the Taiwan Strait; Japan must resolve domestic problems that prevent the increase in defence spending to 2 per cent in the period to 2027. Japan's role as a front-line state to protect the status quo order is very much dependent on the availability of resources that would be provided by this increase in defence spending; Japan should re-energize its efforts towards east Asia through a sustained diplomatic, economic and security means. This is important in securing support for Japan's preferred vision of regional and global order from not only like-minded partners and friends in east Asia, but also China. Japan's approach should underscore how the extant status quo order benefits all states, including China, especially in terms of spreading economic prosperity, development and connectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Structural realists might reasonably predict that foreign policy elites in countries like Japan and Australia would view China's economic and military rise as a potential threat and seek to balance against it. However, the actual policy behaviour of Japanese and Australian policy elites has been quite complex—pushing forward at times, hesitating at others and generally uncertain if an explicit counter-coalition against China through bilateral security cooperation is the right policy path. Why is this? This paper explains the puzzle by focusing on the perceptions of policy-makers regarding the risk of provoking China; entrapment with the other; and entrapment with the United States. The paper demonstrates how policy-makers' concerns regarding entrapment or abandonment related to their mutual US ally—as well as concerns about potentially provoking China—have had an instrumental effect on the degree to which Japan and Australia have strengthened their security commitments to each other. While the rise of China—and the relative decline of US power—has shaped the overall direction of Japan–Australia security ties, such structural imperatives are of course also complicated by how domestic actors think about the tactical aspects of understanding and surviving these structural features. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Anthropology, religious studies, and area studies constitute sociology of religion's disciplinary neighbors through their shared interest in religion as an analytical object. Within these fields, a number of significant critiques of both how religion is defined and described and who ultimately shapes those definitions have emerged. By analyzing clusters of these critiques related to religion as a category and whether religion has essential characteristics, and emic/etic distinctions, this paper incorporates important points in each of these criticisms that have significant implications for the direction of sociological research on religion. Additionally, this paper draws on historical data from China and Japan's period of state formation and their attempts to deal with the question of religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Numerical modelling is a fundamental tool for scenario-based evaluation of hazardous phenomena such as tsunami. Nevertheless, the numerical prediction highly depends on the tool quality and therefore the design of efficient numerical schemes that provide robust and accurate solutions still receives considerable attention. In this paper, we implement two different second-order finite volume numerical schemes deriving from an a priori or an a posteriori limitation procedure and we compare their efficiency in solving the non-conservative shallow-water equations. The numerical schemes assessed here are two variants of the a priori Monotonic Upstream-Centred Scheme for Conservation Laws (MUSCL) and the recent a posteriori multidimensional optimal order detection (MOOD) technique. We benchmark the numerical code, equipped with MUSCL and MOOD techniques, against: (1) a 1-D stationary problem with non-constant bathymetry to assess the second-order convergence of the method when a smooth analytical solution is involved; (2) a 1-D dam-break test to show its capacity to deal with irregular and discontinuous bathymetry in wet zones; and (3) using a simple 1-D analytical tsunami benchmark, 'single wave on a sloping beach', we show that the classical 1-D shallow-water system can be accurately solved by the second-order finite volume methods. Furthermore, we test the performance of the numerical code for the real-case tsunami of Tohoku-Oki, 2011. Through a set of 2-D numerical simulations, the 2011 tsunami records from both DART and GPS buoys are checked against the simulated results using MUSCL and MOOD. We find that the use of the MOOD technique leads to a better approximation between the numerical solutions and the observations than the MUSCL one. MOOD allows sharper shock capture and generates less numerical diffusion, suggesting it as a promising technique for solving shallow-water problems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim To elucidate the distribution and circulation dynamics of Campylobacter and Salmonella in Japanese chicken broiler flocks. Methods and Results A 2-year investigation of the distribution of Campylobacter and Salmonella was conducted in 25 broiler flocks at nine farms in Japan from 2013 to 2014. Campylobacter and Salmonella tested positive in 11 (44·0%) and 24 (96·0%) broiler flocks respectively. One hundred and ninety-five Campylobacter and 184 Salmonella isolates were characterized into 12 Campylobacter (including two novel genotypes) and three Salmonella MLST genotypes. Only Salmonella isolation between caecal and environmental samples were significantly correlated. Further, one litter sample tested positive for Salmonella before new chicks were introduced. The Campylobacter strains rapidly lost culturability within 2-18 days; in contrast, the Salmonella strains survived from 64-211 days in artificially inoculated water samples. Conclusion No persistent circulation-mediated Campylobacter contamination was observed. In contrast, circulation of Salmonella in broiler houses was seen, apparently due to the litter excreted from broiler flocks, as well as Salmonella-contaminated water and feed. Significance and Impact of the Study This paper provides the distribution, genotypic data and circulation dynamics of Campylobacter and Salmonella as recently observed in Japanese chicken broiler farms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We report on a solar jet phenomenon associated with the C5.4 class flare on 2014 November 11. The data of the jet was provided by the Solar Dynamics Observatory, the X-Ray Telescope (XRT) aboard Hinode, and the Interface Region Imaging Spectrograph and Domeless Solar Telescope (DST) at Hida Observatory, Kyoto University. These plentiful data enabled us to present this series of papers to discuss all the processes of the observed phenomena, including energy storage, event trigger, and energy release. In this paper, we focus on the energy release process of the observed jet, and mainly describe our spectral analysis on the Hα data of DST to investigate the internal structure of the Hα jet and its temporal evolution. This analysis reveals that in the physical quantity distributions of the Hα jet, such as line-of-sight velocity and optical thickness, there is a significant gradient in the direction crossing the jet. We interpret this internal structure as the consequence of the migration of the energy release site, based on the idea of ubiquitous reconnection. Moreover, by measuring the horizontal flow of the fine structures in the jet, we succeeded in deriving the three-dimensional velocity field and the line-of-sight acceleration field of the Hα jet. The analysis result indicates that part of the ejecta in the Hα jet experienced additional acceleration after it had been ejected from the lower atmosphere. This secondary acceleration was found to occur in the vicinity of the intersection between the trajectories of the Hα jet and the X-ray jet observed by Hinode/XRT. We propose that a fundamental cause of this phenomenon is magnetic reconnection involving the plasmoid in the observed jet. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]