So welcome everybody to my talk about the topic complex and accessible JavaScript widgets with simple HTML. I'm holding this talk, yeah, in the scope of the Global Accessibility Awareness Day and my special thanks go out to the team of Hello Accessibility. So thanks for organizing this event and thanks for having me here. So a big hello from my side to everybody. My name is Josua or Joshua or Joshua. All three forms are acceptable to me. I'm a full stack web developer for roughly 15 years now. And I can say that I have kind of a deep affection for humanity. I see so much potential in every human being and they have to profound belief that technology should always be used to unlock this human potential. And this means that we have to include as many individuals as possible on this path. So as there was already said, I've been an accessibility expert working for my former employee, Access4All for like eight years. They are doing accessibility business for over 20 years now. So they are like the very early ones that are investing energy and efforts in this topic like in the year 2000 already. And I'm the initiator of the Accessibility Developer Guide which is a comprehensive resource about all topics accessibility which we will see today a little bit more. It's tangible, it's technical and still it's easy to understand. And it offers a lot of code examples which you can kind of take as inspiration or maybe even copy and paste into your own project. The whole guide, including the code is written by developers and for developers but not only developers, also like designers, content creators or other stakeholders, but it's mainly a developers resource. It is open source. So when you head over to accessibilitydeveloper.guide.com we are happy to welcome you in our small but like enthusiastic little group of Swiss and international agencies, web agencies developing this guide together. So I started to work for a new employer this year which whose name is actually nothing. It's just kind of funny. It is a peer to peer organized life as a web agency and venture lab located in Bern close to Bern in Switzerland. And our mission is to help designing a future where technology is used as a tool for humanity and not as a weapon. And our current goal is to become the kind of leading accessible first web company in Switzerland. So if you have any interest in us or our services or our products just head over to nothing.ch Our current flagship product is Peerdom which helps us and our clients to transform to peer to peer organizations. So if you have any interest in this we can help and support you to do the transformation in your own organization. Let's start with a simple question of trust. I mean, a climber heavily trusts in the reliability of his rope and carabiner linking you safely to the rock face, right? And in a highly complex and interconnected world we need structures and values on which to build on which we can rely. And the web design is becoming more and more powerful and often there are many ways to reach a goal. So regarding this link, what do you trust more? A link implemented using an anchor tag using an href attribute or a link implemented using a span tag and an on click attribute. I guess all of you agree with me that it will be the anchor tag to trust in, right? But why? Let me tell you a few benefits of using such traditional HTML. First of all, you get a lot of behavior for free. If you just use this anchor tag, the browser will take care of everything that can be done with this link, which is clicking on it, taking you to the address, providing keyboard focusability or other means of interaction. It offers styles for free, like the usual underline that we see. And it even offers different states that you also can target and style yourself like focus, hover, active states, et cetera, et cetera. Traditional HTML has a huge compatibility with like old and new user agents. So we can trust that this traditional anchor tag will be working in a browser 20 years ago and probably also in a browser 20 years from now. Needless to say, it doesn't need any JavaScript and such degrades gracefully even on limited or older machines. You will say now, let me say a few words about this word traditional, right? So technically spoken, a span is also 100% valid HTML. But when I call something traditional, I mean taking an element which has a traditional purpose for which it was designed and which you can use for exactly this purpose, right? Instead of creating your own custom solution. So you will say now, but wait a moment, we can enhance this span, we can make it look and feel and act like a real link, right? So for sure, we can apply custom aesthetics using CSS here or we can add some custom behavior using JavaScript. We can even make it focusable with the keyboard by using the tab index. What few people probably know is that we can even change semantics. We can use the role attribute which will change the semantic of an element. So the current span will now be announced by a screen reader as a link indeed. Still the question is, how will it perform in the real world situation? And I created a little code pen here. Oops, let me make the browser, not full screen anymore. Let's see how these two solutions or even three solutions, the traditional link, the bear span and the optimized span, how they will perform. So I can click on the link and obviously it takes me to the target. I can also click on the span and that's all right. It works too. What about keyboard operability? I can tap to the link. I can activate it using enter. That's nice. I can not focus the span, the bear one. I can indeed focus the optimized one, but when pressing enter, nothing happens. There's more things. I can try to bookmark the element by drag and dropping the traditional link to the bookmark bar. I cannot do the same with any of the spans, not even the focusable one. It's still not drag and dropable. I also have a context sensitive menu for the traditional link, which allows me to open the link in a new tab. This is not available for neither the bear nor the optimized span, right? So as we see, even though we do our best to mimic the style and behavior of a relink, the spans still are not really links. As we have seen, we cannot open any context menu. We can't bookmark the element. We can't even activate it currently using the keyboard. We would use more like JavaScript for that. And possibly there are many other things that we may not be even aware of that they exist that we would have to take into account and creating such a custom solution. So our entering conclusion is traditional HTML beats quirky custom solutions. Nearly all the time, in my opinion, this is fact because as we have seen, there is much functionality that we just get for free, which just works in all kinds of input and output devices. As such, we can say it's very robust and it is performant. We don't have any like JavaScript overhead. You may say now, but why? Why would anybody implement a link using a span tag, right? So I came, there are three reasons that come to my mind. First of those reasons is just pure ignorance or unaware, being unaware of the situation. And trust me, during the last eight years that I've been working as an accessibility consultant, I've encountered innumerable times that even seasoned web experts were implementing things on their websites with just the wrong HTML elements. Just to name a few typical bad use cases here, for example, list of search results and also navigation menus in single page applications. And just to see a current problematic example that I've just stumbled upon a few days ago, it's Apple's product list. So if you open the Apple product list, you see the hand, my pointer, I can click on these elements, but in fact, they are not links. We don't have a context specific menu here. If we inspect the element, we can see in fact, it's just a picture with a lot of divs around it, but no real link to find here. So as you see, even like the experts are doing this kind of stuff. So it's really a problem. So my advice, or even back all out there, everybody of you, please stop doing this. It's wrong, it's ugly, and it just opens a can of worms of problems, right? So please just use real links or buttons depending on your context. Reason number two, some HTML elements cannot be styled as bushed. This was true, especially in earlier days where many HTML elements just offered limited CSS. And still today, some of the elements cannot be styled in most browsers. For example, the select tag. So if you have the situation where you need a styleable kind of select dropdown, you can use those role attributes. You can just use like a generic diff structure and apply a role of list box to the element resembling the select element. And you can apply many role equals option for all those elements resembling the option elements. The third reason that is that in fact, sometimes HTML is just missing the functionality, the feature, the element that you want to implement. So quite a few well-established usage patterns don't have an HTML equivalent up to this day. For example, there is no tab list tag, nothing like that. So if you are in this situation, you really need to kind of tinker your own custom solution. And just to give an example, you can use an unordered list and apply a role of tab list to it. And for all the tab elements, you can apply role equals tab. So we've seen this role attributes quite a few times now already. Where does it come from actually? It comes from the area, the accessible rich internet applications standard, which was released already eight years ago by the World Wide Web Consortium. It offers attributes to enrich traditional HTML with semantics. And that's the important point. It only adds or changes semantics, nothing else. It does not provide any inherent functionality by itself. So for example, to come back to my diff, my role equals listbox diffs, they will indeed be announced by screen readers now as a select element, but you still cannot interact it neither with screen readers, nor with mouse or keyboard or anything like that. This means you need to add all this functionality yourself using JavaScript. For example, you need to manage all the visibility and styles of the elements. You have to provide keyboard focusability. And the general interactivity of your usage pattern. And what is not obvious at first sight, you also need to update the semantics in the background. For example, if you choose an option here, you need to apply the area selected equals true attribute to the selected option. So this becomes quickly pretty complex. And I will demonstrate how complex it is with the example, an official example from the World Wide Web Consortium, the collapsible drop down listbox example. So let's open it in a new tab and open it in code pen so we can play around with it a little bit. And let's just have a general impression first. So I can click on it, I can open and close it, I can select an option. It looks and feels quite like a select tag, right? Let's see whether I can use it with the keyboard so I can focus it, right? Yeah, I can choose an element, I can press enter to close it, that's all fine. Let's have a quick look at the HTML that was used. So we have a button here and we have an unordered list with roll equals listbox and we have quite a few list elements with roll option. This looks fine so far. Let's look at the CSS. It is 150 lines of CSS, which is quite a lot already, I feel just to kind of mimic a basic select tag but it allows us to do what we initially wanted to do. We can style the element as preferred. We can, for example, apply a red color to the items and now we see beautiful, now we have red elements. This would not be possible with a native select element. Cool. Let's have a quick look at the DOM, the document object model when we are interacting with the element. So let's open it here. So you can see it. Let's just interact a little bit with the keyboard. Come on, all right, open it and browse through the elements. And as you can see, there's quite a lot of things going on. We have the CSS classes that are toggled. We have different area elements attributes which are toggled, which are moved around. Even the button's text is changing manually to the currently selected element right here. So quite a lot of things are going on here and not surprisingly or maybe surprisingly, we need a lot of JavaScript for this. It's 900 lines of code actually that we need to make this element mimic a native select element. And if we think back about the anchor tag which also had kind of a lot of hidden features that we were not aware of, it's probably the same with the native select tag that we need to really make it working for everybody. We need to provide a lot of functionality here. All right. So as you see, we need over 1000 lines of code to make this basic, not native, but a mimicking select dropdown possible. And the problem here is the support for area still varies drastically among different browser and screen reader combinations. So the worst case scenario could be that you invest hours, if not days or weeks into creating your perfectly standards-compliant area implementation, but still some of your users might not be able to use it because they use a browser or screen reader combination which is not yet 100% supported. Also keep in mind that area does not have an answer for everything. So area's bouquet kind of is limited. While it offers a standard for like the list box or the tab list, there is no date ticker, for example, and other usage patterns are also missing. So you will quickly reach the point where there is no official recipe for what you want to achieve. And what will you do then, right? So this is, it's obvious that you can't rely exclusively on area, that there must be some other ways of offering accessible interactive usage patterns. And this is the perfect moment to introduce you to the first rule of area use. It's also taken from the World Wide Web Consortium and it states, quote, if you can use a native HTML element or attribute with the semantics and behavior you require, then do so. Do not instead repurpose an element and add an area role, state or property to make it accessible, end quote. So easily spoken, if there is a native HTML element which does what you're trying to achieve, then please just use this element. And as you will see in a minute, there nearly always exists such a native element, even when not obvious at first sight. But before digging into this, let's first take a look at existing implementations of custom dropdown list boxes, starting with one that we probably all know, Google. So let's open Google in a new tab, enter something into the prompt and we see the suggestions below. Now we're gonna inspect those and we can see Google does as expected, it's just an unordered list with a role of list box and below for each option, we have this diff with a role of option, right? So nothing too surprising here. So, but I have to say, although Google uses those role attributes, screen reader accessibility actually is rather mediocre. I've tested it in advance and while it announces itself as a searchable combo box, which is good, it does not announce any availability of options. So we don't really know as a user, are there any options now? How many are they? How do I interact with them? But if for at random or just if you're an experienced user, you're using your up and down keys, the selected option will be announced to you. The second autocomplete that I wanna take a short look at is Amazon. So to make it short here, Amazon does not use any area. They only use diff and spans. So just a very custom generic implementation, which means that also screen reader accessibility is a rather bad, if not existent. So it does not announce itself as something like a dropdown or a select box or whatever. It just announces itself as a bare text search. A new user would never know that this offers some suggestions to them. It also does not announce, obviously, that there are options, right? At least if at random or by accident, you're using your up and down keys, it will announce the selected option, which is rather a coincidence in my opinion. So in tearing conclusion here, both Amazon and Google, they need a custom dropdown. They wanna style it in an appealing way. So something like a select is not an option, right? Both Google, not both, but Google uses area. Amazon does not use area. Both of them probably have lots of JavaScript in the background handling this element. And still accessibility is mediocre to even bad, right? Right? And this is kind of a, this is not very satisfying, right? So my question, couldn't this be done any better somehow? And I wanna remind you now on the first rule of area usage. Isn't there some traditional HTML element available that we can use for this? And in fact, there is. They are called radio buttons. If you know how to do it, radio buttons are 100% customizable. Namely, you can style your label elements as you prefer, and you can visually hide the input elements, keeping them still focusable and interactive for any user agents, right? So obviously no JavaScript is needed here. And as it's a native element, it's 100% accessible on any platform. Let's have a look at an example for this. And now we are coming back to the accessibility developer guide. Let's look at a list box of radio buttons. In our guide, we call it the ADG auto suggest, ADG for accessibility developer guide. And we will take a look at it in a moment, but let me state first, it is using radio buttons as promised, and it offers very good screen reader accessibility. It announces itself appropriately. It announces the availability of options. It announces the currently selected option and the total of options. And rest assured only a tiny bit of JavaScript is needed for that. So the current talk is kind of a small version of a full day or half day workshop that I used to have to hold, where I show in four milestones how to implement exactly such a widget. And the milestones are number one, basic HTML, just implementing the basic HTML structure. Then number two, adding interactivity using JavaScript. Then adding some basic accessibility optimizations, just a few lines of code, and apply visual styles in the end. So it looks fancy or the way we want it. And now let's just look on the fourth, the final version of the widget. I'm opening in the new tab. And as you can see, it doesn't look very fancy, but you get the point. We can open and close it, we can browse with the mouse through the option. We can even enter some text. It will filter the element. We can for sure use it with the keyboard only. Right. And now let me change the view here to debug mode. So we only see the element and not all the GUI around. So if we disable CSS now, you can see that it's actually really only a list of radio buttons. And by using the up and down arrow key, we are toggling through the element. Very, very easy. Let's see what a screen reader does with that. So I'm opening my Windows 10 virtual machine here. I have Firefox started and NVDA. All right, let's activate speech mode. Speech mode beeps. Speech mode talk. I hope that you can hear it. I really hope it. Otherwise you see it in the speech view. Yes, we can hear it. Perfect, cool. That's very good to hear. So I'm gonna tab now into the input field. Programming language edit collapse 21 options in total. Provides auto suggestions. Blank. So it is announced to us the way we hoped. Let's open it using the down key. Blank, expanded. Tells us it's expanded now. Let's browse a little bit using the down key. Action script, Apple script, ASP, basic, C. So this works pretty well. Clojure. Let's enter a filter. So I'm selecting all of the text now. Clojure selected. Deleting it. Blank. All right. And now I'm entering something. J, three of 21 options for J. Provide A, two of 21 options for J. Provides auto suggestions. So it seems to work. Java, JavaScript. Very well. So as we see, going back to the presentation now, a small verdict, the element is very accessible. It only needs 60 lines of CSS and roughly 200 lines of JavaScript, including the filter functionality. But wait, there is more. There is more such unexpected usages of form controls. In our accessibility developer guide, you can learn how to create a date picker with the exact kind of same structure like we have in the autocomplete. You can learn how to create a tab list or a carousel or an accordion or a menu toggler. But just to give, whoops, just to give one more small example, let's look at the tab list. Opening it, new window. Did it work? Yes, here it is. Scrawling to the proof of concept, which is the actual example. Copy and paste it to our screen reader.  All right. So as you can see visibly, it just looks like a very basic tab list implementation. You can use it with the mouse, with the keyboard. And now I'm activating the speech. Speech mode beeps, speech mode talk. Going to it again. Tablist controls grouping. Show panel rows radio button checked one of three. And I can browse through them using the down or up key. Show panel tool up radio button checked two of three. Show panel sunflower radio. You get the point. So very, very simple. All right, this was quite a lot. Let's take a short moment to recap. Form controls are very powerful. They can much more than just handle basic user input and data. As we have seen, they can handle many simple usage patterns, even complex ones when combined. They are simple and compatible, robust and performant, and they are innately accessible. And as we have seen now, they can be styled as wished. So to come back to my introductory question, what do you trust more? Like when it comes to linking. Is it a traditional A tag with an href attribute? Or is the span with a lot of noise around it? So please remember next time, when you're tempted to glue together some random different span elements with some JavaScript handlers. Thank you a lot for your interest. If you have anything to talk about accessibility, please reach out to yosuaatnothing.ch. We can have a short virtual coffee break together or just go to our services page, nothing.ch slash accessibility. And to those who are interested into learning more about this specific topic, we will have a workshop, a longer workshop on 28th of July. Just go to tiny.cc slash G A A D 21 hyphen workshop. And for those of you who are registering in the next two weeks, we have an early bird offer. You can pay what you want. You can even attend for free if you like. So I'm happy to see you there. Thank you guys. We have a few questions. And the first one is, what is the difference between custom and native widgets and what to consider in terms of accessibility point of view when developing? So what I call native widgets, it's just like the standard controls that you have in your browser. You don't have to implement anything for them, kind of you just have to use standard HTML tags to use them and they will work right out of the box and be accessible, right? And then you can implement your own custom solutions with different approaches. And you have to keep in mind then that you have to provide accessibility yourself. And area jumps into this gap. So it kind of gives you tools to optimize a generic solution. You don't need area for a traditional native widget or tag, right? So it gives you some tools which you need to know how they are supposed to be used. And then you can kind of optimize, you can polish your existing solution into an accessible one. But let me stress this out, in the previous talk was said, you really need to test it using screen readers. If you have someone available and experienced screen reader user like a blind person, please ask them to test it. I've been working in the field for eight years now and I can say I pretty much understand pretty well now how screen readers and other assistive devices work. But as a beginner, please get yourself some help here of real users. Hi, hello. Hello, I hear you. Yeah. Hi, this is Rashmi. Hello. Can I know what is the practice using link as button? Is it good or I have seen on some sites they are using link as button. Exactly, that's a very good question, yeah. In fact, links and buttons, they have different purposes, that both of them can be focused, can be interacted with, they can be clicked. So they are kind of similar. But in the end, a link should take you to a new website, to a new address, while a button is there to trigger some interactivity. So in earlier days, when buttons were not able to be styled using CSS, like in Internet Explorer 6 or something like that, many people just took links or even diffs to kind of mimic buttons. And I think that's the background here, the history why still some web experts feel that they should just use links instead of buttons. And that's just not the best way, right? So if you wanna send your user to a new website, or just like a new page on your website, then you should use an anchor tag with an href attribute. And if you wanna trigger some interactivity, like opening a dialogue or opening and closing a menu, then you should use a button. I hope that answers, Rashmi. Anything else? Yes, no. Cool. So one more question that we have is, you mentioned in our talk as well that many seasoned developers make this mistake of not including accessibility practices in their coding. So for a person who has been coding for a long time and has not considered to include all of these, how would you advise that person how to go about that and how to start including these practices? That's a good question. So I don't wanna make too much self-promotion here, but it's actually the mission that we had when we were implementing the Accessibility Developer Guide. It's targeted at experienced users who already know a lot of web design and how to program and code, et cetera, and just want to level up their skills and take accessibility in mind. So I really can advise, let me just show the slide if I find it here again. So it's this one. The Accessibility Developer Guide, just go to accessibility slash, no, not slash, sorry, hifendveloper-guide.com and there, let me just introduce you for a moment to the project because I feel it's like it's just the right entry point for seasoned people, right? So we have like this introductory part, we have the setup where you are guided through creating your own setup of screen readers, browsers that you will need. It's quite a lot already, just to be able to do accessibility testing. You need a Windows virtual machine, probably. You need the right browsers like Firefox and you need screen readers, probably you will need NVDA and JAWS, but also talk back on mobile and voiceover and maybe even voiceover on your Mac. So it's a lot of things that you can figure out yourself and it took us years to figure out these best practices or you can just head over to this guide and implement those. And then in the next part, we have a lot of knowledge, like what about contrast and colors, what are semantics anyway? I think so many seasoned web experts are using HTML and actually don't really have a clue what semantics are that they even are, but they exist in the first place. It's not optional to use a heading for a heading. It's just how HTML was intended to be used, right? We have a section about ARIA, about keyboard only usage and screen reader usage. And then we have a lot of examples, how to create good heading structures for your website, how to implement accessible tables, how to create forms with validation messages, et cetera, et cetera. And then the widgets. We have widgets for tooltips, tablets, whatever, quite a lot of things here to see and they are meant for inspiration.  Yeah, that's a great resource. I'm definitely checking out accessibility developer guide right away. One last question for you is how to go about accessibility audits for websites? Like, who do you want to share your experience and how do you think we should go about it? So back in the days, like eight years ago, when I started at Access for All, there were not many tools that we could use for audits. And we learned to do audits just manually, fire up a screen reader, test the website, try to use a website using keyboard only, look for bad contrasts, et cetera, et cetera. So it's kind of a toolset which is, yeah, it is quite a lot to learn in the beginning because there are other areas like video, you need to make sure that there are closed captions, audio description, et cetera. You can expand it to PDF, so it's quite a big world. But luckily today, there are quite a few tools which assist you. And I would suggest you to use a tool which does automatic testing for you in the first place, but also helps you to do manual testing. Never trust a tool which tells you, I'm gonna do an audit for you, and that's all you need. This is just not possible and probably will never be possible because accessibility has so much to do with very distinct and, yeah, it's just, it's a very humane topic. You can't just write some technical rules and test everything automatically. So I think if you really want to become a seasoned accessibility developer, you will have to learn some of those tools, especially how to use a screen reader. But get yourself help with the automated testing tools that there are, for example, tenon.io, I guess, is a good one. There are quite a few at the moment. There are even three ones which you can run in your browser, like the AXE or AXE, I don't really know how to just call it in Chrome. There are a lot of tools, too many tools in my opinion. But yeah, get inspired. Yeah, I mean, like a lot of developers are often worried about how fast is their website. They often do that sort of testing, but they must do an accessibility audit. That was totally, totally. I always say, if developers or designers would invest just a fraction of the time they invest for creating pixel perfect, beautiful, stunning visual experiences, then we would have a much better and much accessible web. That's such a good advice. So, at least you raise your hand, you want to add in something or ask something. Yeah, yeah, Joshua. So this one just question me means you talked about accessibility guide that you prepared, but so do we, do you have any reusable pattern library that you have created using the native HTML? You know, that is really helpful to some, you know, the budding developers or something of that sort. Yes, we do. Not in the sense that it's just like a JavaScript library that you can just like link to from your website, but all of our topics that we have in our accessibility developer guide, they have real, real life examples in there. Very simple, for example, the headings examples, a good heading example, just very basic headings just to get a picture of what are good headings. Then we go more deeply into the topic. We show how to visually hide headings. So that a heading structure still makes sense, but does not distract the visual appearance. And all of these examples you can click on and then you have them like traditional HTML elements that you can play with, that you can interact with using a screen reader. It's all made for kind of creating the smallest pieces and bits that are important and relevant from an accessibility perspective, so that even users who do not have a lot of experience can just play with it and see and look into the DOM and see what JavaScript is doing there so they can see what is going on in the end. So you get a lot of inspiration here, but it's not something that you can just copy and paste to your own project kind of. Does this answer your question? Yeah, I think it was great. One last question. I think your presentation was so awesome that people are going to ask a lot of questions and they appreciated you in the chats as well. So one last question from Krushna. He goes on to say that when developers are working on legacy systems and there's a limitation that you can't use semantic elements, how to go about with that. And in continuation of the same, he says that on the contrary, when we're using external JavaScript API like ReactJS or any open UI framework, they automatically provide div blocks to the DOM tree for any semantic control. So how can you restrict that? Yeah, these are two important questions. So the first question, if you are implementing a web app or a website for a legacy system, you should stick to the selection of features that are kind of provided by this legacy system. It feels absurd to me to have to wish to create a full-fledged modern application inside a restricted environment So I would rather try to rethink whether those features that you are trying to implement are actually needed and rather adapt the usability and the interaction patterns to the, yeah, just to the basic basis that you have with your system. And as you have seen, I mean radio buttons and stuff like that, they were here like decades ago. You can do a lot of stuff with those. Probably it's not the legacy systems which introduced the problems, but just like bad coding or like unaware coding and trying to pack too many fancy interactive options into your project, which in the end might not be even necessary, which in the end might even be like confusing to many users because they don't know our drag and drop, what's that? Oh my God. I'd rather just have a button here and a native drop down there. And that's all that I need. I don't need any flashing and moving around stuff. I'm exaggerating a little bit, but I think we get the point. And the second question, this is one of the main problems, I guess, that many seasoned web frameworks from Google, Angular, View, you can name all of those react. Many of them, I mean, they are trying. They are creating better experiences today that they did a few years ago, but still a lot of them are just, sorry that I said, they are just creating shitty HTML. And it's kind of the only thing that we can do there is to make those people more aware of the topic, I guess, and try to push the topic inside those communities. That's more or less if you try to optimize such bad code and throw in a little bit of Aria here and a little bit of semantics there, usually it's not gonna become much better. Sometimes it's getting even worse.


My name is Tsuyoshi Nohara, I'm for the record, I'm sitting here as a secretary general for U.S. Japan Project, Japan Center for Economic Research, JSA, which is an affiliated body of Nikkei Inc. I'm still a semi-journalist, but I'm sitting here again as a secretary general, so whatever I would say, you know, with my capacity and not related to my company. Anyway, so I'd like to introduce my colleagues here, both from the United States and Japan, and it's always nice to be back here, my second hometown, Washington, and it's always nice for me to see my old Washington friends. First of all, Shira Sumi-san, nice to see you again, and welcome. And Sakoda-san, during the 90s, Robin Sakoda used to be my very strict teacher of Pentagon when I was a young journalist to cover Pentagon, so it's always nice to be with you. And from Japanese side, we have a very famous Navy Army Club from Navy, or Japan Self-Defense Maritime to Self-Defense Admiral Koda from Japanese Self-Defense Grand Force and General Yamaguchi Nobo, and welcome. And first, I'd like to ask those four panelists to make brief comments on the future course of the U.S. and then we're going to touch on three categories. Number one is, again, future cooperation and the possibility and potential of the U.S.-Japan alliance across the Pacific. Number two is how to deal with rise of China. And number three, Korean Peninsula. So first, I'd like to ask you, Shira-san, to start with your remark, please. Thank you very much, Sonohara-san, and thank you for including me. I will warn the audience that I just got back from Tokyo, so I think I'm a little bit, they wanted me to speak first before I fell asleep. But I thought what I'd do here is talk a little bit about what Kitagawa-sensei and Mike were talking about in the first panel. I've just come back from a week or so of really trying to take a look at the political dialogue in Tokyo and collect a self-defense on the alliance. And I talked to uniformed thinkers as well as civilians as well as some of Japan's politicians. And there's been a couple of things for me from the perspective of somebody who sits inside the Beltway at the Council on Foreign Relations that I think is interesting about this current debate. It's different. All of the factors, I think, that Kitagawa-sensei outlined about Mr. Abe's leadership, about the change in the region, the context within which Japan and the United States now have to think about the alliance. All of those are very relevant. Let me talk a little bit about the politics as I see them. When we sit here in Washington, we tend to think that alliance changes are too slow. Japan is incremental, doesn't change. It's very grudging change when it happens, right? But of late, you'll read a lot of media headlines that are a little bit alarmist about Mr. Abe, right, about his leadership, about Mr. Abe moving too fast. So there's always this debate, I think, about Japan's defense, especially the military component, transformations and changes in policy debate. And I'm here not to reassure you that the third Goldilocks version is correct, but that some things actually are moving rapidly. And they have been long on the back burner, perhaps, but they are moving quickly. And I think it's for two reasons. One is, I think there's largely a consensus. And I think Kitagawa-sensei was right to point out the fact that many of the policies being discussed were policies discussed under a DPJ leadership, as well as under an LDP leadership. And the reason they're being discussed is because many people in Japan feel the time has come, these policy changes are really overdue. And so the regional context within which some of these changes are being made, I think, is first and foremost one of the motivators or drivers, if you will, of the pace of change in Japan. I think lots of people worry about Mr. Abe's politics. I don't think that's what I saw when I was in Tokyo this last week in terms of the dynamics at home in Japan. So let me give you a feel for what I saw this week. Abe-san, once he received the report that Mr. Kitoka's commission presented him with, which was a very thorough, extensive look at the questions on use of force, on where and how and when Japan should embed its military capability in global cooperation, Mr. Abe selected a very narrow range of recommendations on that report for the first piece of the conversation, at least the piece that's going on now with the Kometo. So already I think you see the political factors that are coming to bear in terms of how this conversation over collective self-defense will move forward. I got to Japan a week ago, last weekend, and already the Kometo and the LDP, the ruling coalition, had had a fairly smooth conversation about gray zone activities, right? Things that, even though Kitoka-san was critical of, they felt that were prior to the initiation of a conflict. There wasn't a whole lot of difference between the Kometo thinking and the LDP. On collective self-defense, you'll see the conversation moving this week in a day-by-day sort of manner. On Monday, Mr. Komura came out with his tatakidai, or his draft of three new principles that would govern Japan's use of force, and that is collective as well as individual. The very little changes, frankly, from the three principles that had been the accepted parameters on the use of force. The one place, however, where the Kometo and LDP are struggling, frankly, to reach a conclusion, I suspect, is on this area of collective self-defense, and that is both the timing of Japan's military becoming engaged with the United States and also the mission-specific conditions under which the Kometo feels comfortable. So as you watch this week, be very alert to timing in terms of initiation and placing of the Japanese self-defense forces along with the Americans or other foreign countries, and also be very attentive to the way the Kometo is moving forward with its kind of comfort about a very restrictive use of collective, the right of collective self-defense. I, too, I think perhaps, like Hitoko-Sensei, I was rather disappointed that Mr. Abe didn't include collective security. I don't think that Japan is not going to think about collective security in the future, but for this round, in this year, in this conversation, I suspect it was a bridge too far. I will also note, finally, on Mr. Abe's announcement, is that he stressed the minimal necessary use of force, which is a principle, I think, that has a broad consensus inside Japan, among political parties, as well as among the public. This is not a situation where Japan is willing to really move beyond its postwar interpretation that Article 9 allows the right of self-defense, but not the unlimited use of force for that purpose. I think these are the kinds of constraints within which Mr. Abe is working, and it has already been defined in a very limited way from the broad sweep of options that Mr. Abe could have thought about. One other piece of the puzzle in Japan that I don't yet have a conclusion about, but for those of you watching in the months ahead, because there will be a parliamentary debate about revised laws in the fall, and you will continue to hear debate in Japan, not about specific missions, but about the process by which this decision is being made. This is the political consensus part of what's going to happen, not just the military rationale for a change in Japanese policy, but the political consensus building process that I suspect is the first step, is the Kometo discussion, but it'll be a broader discussion going forward. Whether a cabinet decision is sufficient, you already hear critics talking about we need a broader parliamentary bill, right? It ought to take place in a broader framework in the diet, and I think there's always this question of, is interpretation the right way to go? And I think inside from both progressive left parties as well as those who are more conservative in origin, there is a conversation about perhaps we should just simply reinterpret or revise the Constitution rather than relying on reinterpretation. I suspect that these process level concerns are going to continue to be a source of criticism for the Abe cabinet, but I don't know yet how they're going to resolve themselves in terms of policy. In conclusion, this is the third round of conversation between the United States and Japan on the bilateral defense cooperation guidelines. Those of you, many of you in the room know this already, but for those of you who don't, the first one of course was in 1978. The second one was in the mid-1990s, and my colleagues to the right here participated in that process. What's different I sense on this round is that it's largely being driven by Japan's needs. And I'm not saying that to say the United States doesn't have a role in shaping the conversation in Tokyo, certainly. The United States is actively engaged in talking with Japanese counterparts, but really the streamlining of laws, the refinement of principles, the question about just how much and how far Japan has to prepare to use force is really being driven by an internal process within Japan, both among the security planners and those extended experts outside of the planning community. Streamlining laws is a result in large part about experiences that the Japanese self-defense forces have already had. We forget that the Japanese self-defense force has been a very active participant in PKO. It has been a very active ally with the United States. And really a lot of the process that I see, the specific targets of reform, are really dedicated to those areas where the SDF and the civilian planners have understood that these limits imposed are barriers to effective cooperation. They are not being drawn out of nowhere. They actually come from experience. Finally, let me conclude by talking a little bit, but I think where Mike was leaving us off here, which is what is the function of the guidelines? What is the function of these changes in the bilateral relationship as well as in Japan's own thinking? And that is the, how do we think about the United States and Japan as we move forward ensuring Japanese defense and effective alliance cooperation? How do we make sure this reassures the region as opposed to startles the region? And I think clearly what is different from the 1990s is the Japan-South Korea relationship is on a different footing. The last couple of years of estrangement in that relationship have made communication about strategic interests and strategic cooperation more difficult than in the past. So I think it will be who both Japanese and American policymakers, as well as the experts community, to seek out partners in South Korea, both in the public domain as well as inside the government, to make sure that that reassurance message is there. I think so, because since they said it very clearly, there is no intent in Tokyo in taking the Japanese military anywhere near the Korean Peninsula without the express permission of the Korean government. China, I suspect, will not want to be reassured. And I think we should just accept that. That doesn't mean, however, that the United States and Japan then do not have to put effort into the kinds of engagement processes that we have already supported in the past. The Mill-Mill Dialogue, the broader regional context of both humanitarian and disaster relief assistance, finding opportunity like their impact exercises for greater Chinese participation. It will be just as incumbent upon both sides of the alliance to pursue those avenues of engagement. But I don't think we should be too optimistic about Beijing's desire for engagement, at least not on the terms that the U.S. and Japan are comfortable with at the moment. So let me stop there. Thank you. Thank you, Mr. Yosemite. So, let me know. Mr. Yosemite. Thank you very much. I am Mr. Yosemite. I am Admiral Yosemite. Perhaps I am not so well known in this arena. I was just a lazy former destroyer driver. And also the brother-in-law of the SAC for years, we promised. But Shira mentioned something about the defense guidelines. But especially for Japan and the United States, my point, which I'm going to speak today, is how well should Japan and the United States build a future posture to meet the coming Chinese challenges, security challenges. And of course, especially after the Cold War, end of Cold War, or demise of the Soviet Union, the U.S.-Japan alliance has been a key stabilizer for the security of the region, together with the security of Japan. And this is very clear. But especially after the mid-1990s, U.S. and Japan have started facing the new challenges generated by rising China. And this Chinese strategy is characterized as the A280 strategy. And how well are we going to be able to meet. And perhaps Shira mentioned the Japanese high interpretation of the Japanese, the political situation or revision of the Japanese new defense policy. And I'm going to speak mainly from the military force built up point of view. And both Mr. Kitaka and Shira mentioned the last year, the new security, the Japanese new security strategy and defense NDPG and the five-year program were issued. And yes, for the first time after the World War II history of Japan, the Japanese government issued the security document. In that sense, I to grade the document as A. But at the same time, when I look, especially the security strategy, there are several things which are missing from the military point of view. And that's the subject of my today's speech. And first, what is A280? Is that the operational plan? No. That's a Chinese rationale to build its own military, to meet the U.S. capability perhaps 10 to 20 years from now. So is today's China giant? No. They are not so capable. But they are today building their military under the rationale of A280 to meet the U.S. capability in 10 or 20 years from now. That's, so please do not confuse. This is not an old plan or campaign plan. This is the force-built-up rationale. This is one thing we should remember. And what is the objective? Of course, the U.S. forces operating and, you know, the station in this area, in this area, not in our area. Okay. What are the U.S. forces in our area? There are basically two forces. One U.S. force is in the U.S. forces in Korea. They are the tailored force against the North Korea. So perhaps the less flexibility in terms of the deployment other than the Korean Peninsula. And U.S. forces stationed in Japan, is that, are those forces are the dedicated forces to only defend Japan? No. That's the real driving force, which really realize the U.S. global structure, strategy. Without the U.S. forces in Japan, perhaps the U.S. regional and global strategy would be very difficult. And what are the U.S. forces in Japan? Please think about that. Do you know the size of Japan? What U.S. state is the closest to Japan? Many say California. No. Montana, state of Montana. Okay. But think about that. Okay. State of Montana and Japan's 65% is mountain. There are six jet U.S. bases. Okay. Fifty-five thousand U.S. service personnel. Two naval bases. And that's the U.S. forces, okay. Which those U.S. forces stationed in Japan are the real enabler of the U.S. global strategy. And that's the Japanese responsibility and also the U.S. responsibility to maintain those forces in the area and to maintain the stability of the region. Okay. Then there are, there will be Chinese challenges under the rationale of the AT&T. Okay. And my observation, three areas. One is the area where we should focus mainly on the maritime domain. Okay. The first, China is pretty well known by its development of the anti-ship ballistic missile. That's a new challenge for U.S. and Japan. U.S. and Japan are doing the post-missile defense. But the story would be very different. To protect U.S. carriers or amphibian forces from the Chinese anti-ship ballistic missile. Because the terminal phages, okay, the trajectory is normal ballistic. That made us our defense posture very difficult. Do we do nothing for the future? No. That's the new area where U.S. and Japan should allocate a lot of resources. Okay. Please think about that. Okay. If the U.S. loses two carriers, heavily damaged by one, what's your rationale in our sentiment in Washington, DC? Do you still maintain the strong motive to come in? We believe so. But maybe not. In order to minimize those risks, both U.S. and Japan have to have the good new posture to maintain our fleet under the idea of new fleet anti-b ballistic ship missile. That's something we should do for the future. Second is anti-submarine warfare, which is something still true today from the Cold War days. Japan is responsible for the anti-submarine warfare in the Pacific and which substantially reduced Chinese submarine threat, which convinced U.S. leaders to deploy your forces to the area. It's our responsibility, but coordination is also necessary. That's the first area. And second area is basically Japanese mainland or homeland defense. What's homeland defense? This is very different from the Cold War days. In Cold War days, that Sheila mentioned, and also you understand, we focus mainly on the north. We prepared ourselves against the invasion from the Soviet, and we did that. But today, no, the western island. And what's the threat? Chinese ballistic missile, cruise missile, and sabotage. Subtrage is the very new thing for Japan. Japan has exposed many Achilles' Heels, like the nuclear power plants or the fossil fuel fuel burning the power plants, or HAB for the transportation, or, you know, the high speed train, everything. They're vulnerable. And China may deploy its special forces, not the major invasion.  Maybe the Fukushima disaster, okay, that size of the confusion could happen, or ten times a dodge, or a hundred times a dodge at that one. That's something we have to prepare. And another part is the choke point. For Chinese military to realize it's a 280 strategy, they need to have a capability to penetrate the Okinawa island chains. Those traits we call the choke point, who controls we. And that's Japanese responsibility. By so doing, what Japanese contribution enable US forces to operate any area in our region? That's the Japanese defense and the responsibility. But in order to realize that responsibility, Japan has to protect and defend our own mainland as well as the western islands. That's the value of the Japanese operations. So we need to have the clear understanding between Washington and Tokyo, how well we will establish, how soon, and where to protect. Those are the kind of the agreement should be incorporated into the defense guideline and roles capability review. And the third one is okay, we are now basically reacting in the maritime area and homeland defense. But okay, that's part of a strategy. What is lacking now in my story is a kind of the offensive. China also has a huge Achilles heel. For example, the treasure in the story area, stretching from the Hong Kong to Tianjin. Many American said, or Japanese media said, Japan is vulnerable against Chinese cruise missile attack. Yes. But how about China? Those Chinese treasure area from Hong Kong to Tianjin. How about the US swarm tomahawk attack? That's the way how we deter China. So without those capability, we may invite Chinese adventurism. So this is some, this is my third area. The offensive capability by fully utilizing their Achilles heels. So how about their slugs? In Cold War days, Soviet Union was not the slug's dependent country. Their slug in the Far East is almost nothing. But today, where are the Chinese slugs? Indian Ocean, many. Pacific Ocean, many. How many submarines we have? We are going to have 23, 22. US, perhaps 30 in the area. India, many. So China will also expose its vulnerability of the slugs to us. So my point is, we do not fight, but at least in order for us to deter China, we should have capability. This is our rationale. And also the chalk point. Why do we control the chalk point in the southwestern island? This will really block and disable Chinese operations. Chinese capability to operate their naval and air forces, which realize their A2AD strategy. And you know, I think you understand. What I told you now, these are not difficult operations for us because we have capability. And if our leadership, both political and military leadership, is wise enough, we will be able to realize this thought point, offensive capability. And then we will be able to deter China. So those three areas, okay, that's a kind of new and old idea mixed together, but should be incorporated into our undergoing the defense guideline and the roles mission capability review by lateral effort. And if those, you know, the new ideas and the old ideas are pretty well taken into those two strategies, coming documents, I think cooperative posture would be very, would become very robust and will contribute to the stability and security of the region, as well as the security of Japan. This is my point. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Koda. So please go ahead. Saksana. Thanks to Mike and your team for having me, Kito Sensei, for your presentation and your hard work and in helping to reform this alliance in a really positive direction. I think this is a really, truly remarkable time for the alliance when it comes to the reforms that are being considered, some that have already recently been done, and the outcome for all of these have not yet been set. As I look around the room, you know, I've been focused on U.S.-Japan alliance management for about 20 years, but I see some faces of folks that have much deeper experience in me, Tom Hubbard, Stanley Roth, Russ Deming, Robin, and I don't want to put words in your mouth, but I think you would agree this is this is quite a remarkable time. Part of it is for reasons that Sheila outlined for why this time is different than the previous rounds she referred to them. I was not present at the first round, but I was at the second, and because as I look around this audience, I see a lot of younger faces, and I'm very encouraged by that. Let me give a quick sense of how and why this is so different. I remember when we issued the Joint Security Declaration in 96, the Gehinkan in Tokyo, and there was a press conference that was in the outside of the facility, and one journalist asked Prime Minister Hashimoto, the Joint Security Declaration is the declaration that set forth both sides to review the guidelines, and one journalist asked the Prime Minister why did you decide to review the guidelines at this time, and I remember that the Prime Minister paused. I got a little nervous for him, but he paused, and he was thinking, and finally he said we decided to review the guidelines because it's unclear what are the areas that we can and cannot do when it comes to defense and the alliance, and that shocked me. That was stunning to me because I thought as the Japan Country Director in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, maybe I didn't know, but surely the Prime Minister knew why what are the things that Japan and the U.S. could and couldn't do, but I took that as homework and then we moved forward with reviewing the guidelines with my colleagues, then Colonel Yamaguchi and Captain Koda, and we did the deal, but the context then was that we were trying to figure out what it is that we couldn't couldn't do. We were trying to bring clarity to the situation that we had at hand. This is very different. This is changing the framework within which we will operate. Back then it was how are we going to cooperate bilaterally, regionally, and globally as an alliance, and again within the framework that was in place. This is changing the framework. This is trying to figure out adjustments to collective self-defense. Japan has recently made an adjustment to its arms export control principles, and that will change how we are able to cooperate, how we can become more efficient and a better alliance. The point that I'd like to make in my three minutes remaining here is, so what? The so what of after these reforms are made, how can that change the alliance and how we do business? When I think most people look at adjustments, potential adjustments in the collective self-defense, and how Japan deals with that, it brings to mind, okay, these then are areas that we can cooperate in more. And the thing that comes to mind probably foremost is how do we deal with a specific situation now? Given this situation, how do we respond to it? Well, we can do more together, and that's the context of contingency planning. How do we prepare for something that may pop up? And contingency planning is how do we respond to a situation with the force at hand? Back in the day in 96, 97, when we were working on guidelines, that's pretty much what the guidelines was all about. Mostly, how do we change the way that we do contingency planning? But the combination of a lot of these reforms really changes a lot of things on how the alliance can become more efficient, more effective. Arms escort control principles, because they've been relaxed more formally. That has an implication for how we go about doing defense planning. And defense planning is more about what is the future force that we need to have? What are the capabilities that we should have? How do we develop those capabilities, and how do we bring them to fore? And so the implication here is that collective self-defense will identify areas where we can do more. In the here and now for a specific situation with forces that we have on hand. But it also identifies openings for what are the capabilities that we should have in the future? And should we be working on those things together? And that gets into more of defense planning. And defense planning is a very sensitive, very secretive work. And I'm not suggesting that both sides turn over their work to the other. But I think missile defense, for example, was an opportunity that Japan by ad hoc specifically accepted missile defense from its arms export control principles that allowed us to move forward with working together on research and development, working together on production, and working together on cooperation of that system. This now opens it up to, I think, greater possibilities. And those are the things I think we need to think about. One question in the earlier session kind of suggested that. But I think this opens it up to a lot greater possibilities to become more effective. Thank you, Saku-san. So thank you for your patience, General Yamaguchi. Please go ahead. Thank you very much. I, too, I'm very glad to be here to see many of, not, I'm not talking about age, but the old friend of mine. Anyway, I have, I have given, I was given five minutes to talk. And I, I I have maybe one hour strength lengths. But I will strictly limit three things, three determined things. One, North Korea is going to be threat for the foreseeable future. Two, China is rising. Three, United States is going to be Japan's ally. That's three. One, North Korea, we have to get together. Japan, US, South Korea, along with other countries, even, even Chinese, China, we have to deal with North Korea threat period. The second, China's rise is given, but to what, to which direction China rises is not given. We can, if we are strong enough and if we are smart enough and we, we can get together, we can shape the, shape the course. That is not, that is good for us, but it's not for only us, but for, for, for Chinese, too. So we have to do our best to shape the course of China's rise. In that sense, Japan, what can Japan do is two, two things. We have to engage China and we have to hedge China.  I have to be, I have to at least look, look smart and I have to, I have to be strong. So getting stronger for Japan is very important to, to engage China. In that sense, the last thing comes. Our relations with, with United States, along with our own defense capabilities may enforce our capability to hedge and engage China. That is really important. In that context, guidelines, which second quarters and I, I used to work hard, 96, 97, that, that work is really, really important. In that sense, just one suggestion for the next generation, you know, people who might have to work really hard, like Sekiguchi, Sekiguchi, is that there are differences, particularly differences between U.S. and Japan, perhaps even among Japanese, you know, among, among Americans, differences on threat perception and differences on policy priorities and differences on sensitivities in, in their minds, in terms of talking about declaratory policy. So, but first thing we need to do is understand the differences and then secondly, we have to overcome the differences to reach the consensus. Which part we should, we should take the energy first and prioritize the mission and we have to do every effort to make, make the concrete case on which Japan and U.S. should work together. And what can do is the question, was a question for us, but this, this time, in addition to what can Japan do or what can the United States do, we might have to think about what Japan should or wants to do, what, and also what does the United States want to do. Those things should be discussed again. We are not living in the limited box. So we have to be creative and particularly this is important when we talk about, when we talk about how we engage rising China. Thank you. Thank you so much. First, and I need to complain to Mike that this time shortation, because of this time shortage that our time is running out, it's only 20 minutes to go. So I'd like to ask you for partners to discuss simultaneously what I said earlier, U.S.-Japan future course on the China rise and North Korea thing. And I believe that here, as a moderator, as a journalist from Tokyo, that the Japan's strategic goal is to keep a peace and prosperity in this Asia-Pacific region together with the closest friends and ally in this region, United States of America. And because of internal political warfare in Tokyo, there's so many negative reports on what's going on inside our administration in Tokyo, including what Mitsa Kitaoka has explained kindly today to you all. But please do not misunderstand what we are trying to achieve is not another invasion, another fight, not at all, but to keep prosperity and peace in that region so that everybody, every player in that region can enjoy any outcome of those kinds of peace and prosperity. That's for that sake, we are trying to set up a new, what I say, joint deterrence. Together again, you, United States of America. Having said that, would you please anybody start on the future course US-Japan and including, of course, simultaneously you can touch upon how to deal with rise of China and North Korea contingency or whatever. Anybody, please go ahead. I forgot to mention one thing, our relations or our relations with South Korea or the relations between US-Japan alliance and ROK-Japan alliance are really, really important. For Korean contingency, Japan should become the backyard for the main fighters. And in terms of security of Japan, China provides 100% South Korea provides 100% secure flank on Kyushu, particularly north of Kyushu. Those importance and mutual reliance should be widely shared by the Koreans and Japanese. And we have to think of that. And in that sense, the guidelines review may give us a golden opportunity. I remember that 1996 and 97, when we worked to revise the guidelines with SAC and my green here, and Koreans were so sensitive about what Japan and US were doing. And they are very much interested in what we are discussing. So both governments decided to have trilateral. And whenever we talked about what Japan and US doing to Koreans, all the generals and admirals started taking notes. At the same time, US and Korea did start kind of a new operational planning thinking. That was totally new to Japanese. So when Korean Korean briefer began his explanation about what US and Korea were discussing, all the participants from the Japanese side, including me, all of a sudden started taking notes. So we are very much interested in what would happen in Korean Peninsula. They are very much interested in what would happen between US and Japan. So this will become a very, very strong incentive for the both defense military authorities of Korea and Japan and to deepen that mutual understanding. That might lead to kind of better relations between the two people. Thank you. Shirazan, do you have any? I just very briefly thank you. I think there's a couple of thoughts I had on the just the alliance management side, mostly because Noburo was just talking about the Japan-ROK relationship. It seems to me that there's a little learning that can go on between the US and ROK and the US and Japan. Since 2010, the United States and South Korean governments have been talking about a provocation, anti-provocation measures, right, in the wake of the Cheonan sinking and then in the wake of the Yongkwang shelling. The South Korean government and the US government had to think of very different kinds of contingencies rather than the straightforward war contingency between North and South. I think there's a lot of learning perhaps, maybe not indirectly, because the command structure is different and the situation may be different, but I think an anti-provocation strategy and a way of talking about provocative behavior below the level of actual conflict is going to be very useful for the guidelines review in and of itself. For those of us who sit here in Washington, we will have heard a lot about US considerations and US planners worried about emboldening allies and thinking about this new risk setting in Northeast Asia. And again, I think here the guidelines review is one piece of the prescription for the guidelines review is for us to have a much clearer sense of how the two militaries were interact, but I also think it's going to be imperative for the US and Japan to talk very carefully about our political crisis management scenarios. And I think a lot of the discussion that's going on inside Tokyo today about grace-owned contingencies will help the US and Japan have a very careful conversation about what would happen if in a variety of settings that the alliance really hasn't had to deal with and specifically those are maritime kinds of contingencies. One last piece of the frame we haven't really talked about, and I don't know soon how to sign if you wanted to talk about it here, but everybody to the right of me has a lot of experience thinking about these things. But risk reduction frameworks are clearly one piece of the puzzle not just for us in partnership, but also in partnership with ASEAN countries and that's a place also where we obviously have to get China at the table. We can't have a one sided risk reduction regime in the Asia Pacific, but on the other hand I think there's lots of things we can do in terms of maritime domain awareness, the technologies, the open transparencies. There's a lot we can do with partners in Southeast Asia as well and we shouldn't hesitate or wait until China decides it wants to have risk reduction measures. We should engage a lot more forcefully across the region and hopefully that will provide venues of dialogue with with the People's Republic of China. Thank you. Thank you, Sira-san. Any additional comments, Saku-san? No? No, no. Then we'd like to go to Q&A, please. And just one point for related to risk reduction. This is really important. Military to military dialogue is quite important. In that sense I have not given up yet. Even the relation with China and Korea. Korea has kept sending three cadets to National Defense Academy. They bring a number of Japanese friends back home and we send three students to Korean three different academies and China has kept sending a scholar for the National Defense Academy's international conferences for military academies. This year too in early next month we will have senior colonel from Chinese National Defense University and they have kept invited students our students or cadets to their own international conferences. So we are doing our best to keep the communication channel and they are doing the same. They are seemingly doing the same thing. Thank you. And just with regard to the risk reduction with China. I was a frequent visitor to China. Many of you visited Beijing but in Japan there is no formal official meal-meal relationship. So I as a retired senior officer I visited Beijing last year to five times and the year before and three times and mainly we discussed the risk reduction. But the reality or fact is China never tried to separate the Senkaku issue with all the other security issues. So that makes the dial very difficult. Very difficult. This is the reality. Please understand. Okay. So now the floor is open. Anybody would like to ask any questions? Please go ahead. Hi I'm Brant Pasco from the law firm K-Scholler. There's been brief mention of industrial defense cooperation but not much discussion of it today. I've just observed that you know a typical feature of U.S. military alliances is deep industrial cooperation. And so for example there are several hundred companies in the United States that are foreign owned and do classified work for the U.S. government. I don't think probably even one percent of those companies are Japanese. I'm curious what can be done to deepen the industrial cooperation between Japan and the United States and further the alliance. Please. You know the best way to describe is you know the Japanese participation should be the area where the U.S. are not so good at. For example conventional submarine or some specific guidance equipment or chip or whatever. But in Japan Japan Japanese defense industry even the Mitsubishi I think their share is very very low in the total sales. So perhaps the and also you know the no major M&A among the Japanese major industry. So if you take a look at the each independent company or capability of each independent company they are not so strong or good. But you know but as I mentioned for example the conventional submarine which Australia really wants you know Japan is the only nation which can provide the technology and also the building capability. So you know the U.S. and Japan should wisely allocate their area of responsibility depending on the area where the U.S. is good at and Japan is good at. And this is all I can say. Thank you. Thank you. So next question. Go ahead. Please. Thank you so much Chris Nelson Nelson report. Thanks for a great discussion especially thanks to my friend Johnny Amaguchi for reminding us about the Korea angle. But just on that last point quickly it's also we'd love to see but I'd sure like to hear the Armed Services Committee reaction to American contractors not getting a contract as Mitsubishi got it. You know that's always the terrible conundrum isn't it. We want all our lives to help except it cost us a job. But anyway on the Korea angle how important is Japanese Korean military professionalism. Can it influence the politics that's currently in the way of a more rational alliance relationship. Are there things that at the mill level at the senior friends level of the retired level that it would be good to see to try to calm down some of these things that are so difficult. We've got Mr. Suga and his little investigation due to be announced by the end of the week and maybe nothing's gonna happen maybe all hell's gonna break loose and that's gonna set everything back. So just on that on that issue alone and then in the strictly military sense is there any point yet in talking about Korean naval strength and air strength as part of the combined asset of U.S. Japan assets. We never hear anything about that and yet I've always been told Koreans have a hell of a good navy. Why don't we hear about that and is it too soon to be thinking about them as part of this force. Thank you. General, you ready? Are you ready to answer? Okay. I admire the kind of professionalism of current Korean forces. They are so professional and apolitical. That is what I admire but they are under political control so I have a feeling that you know the higher the rank becomes they they tend to be more sensitive the more sensitive to to the direction which political leadership takes. So in that sense you know I I would say Kano below are okay now the Brigadier or the Major General or above they are very much cautious but that is that that's the nature of you know democratic military so that that is a good sense but anyway as soon as political political leadership says says go ahead we are we are we are totally ready to to do many things together and as to navy and air force of course we are neighbors and we are allies allies so the there was actually a discussion from Korean site several several several years ago he was talking about air force to air force corporation of air patrolling it's not it's not a wartime mission but he was talking about east side of Korean peninsula and west side of Korean peninsula which can be can be patrolled by joint joint air forces that was three years ago but those professionals are dealing with air or maritime issues may must have the good idea how to cooperate in the future if the political climate permits. Okay one last question up yeah Arthur Herman Hudson Institute very fascinating discussion but nothing has been said so far about security cooperation on cyber threats whether when it's talking about advanced persistent threats or non-state actors and I'm wondering what the panel's view is on what would constitute a suitable framework for that kind of security cooperation. Anybody? It is yes it is really important this and also this building is a very appropriate place because Dr. Hamlet when he was the number two at the DOD he was very much eager to teach us teach us about how we should deal with cyber threat just after DOD was attacked by by a high school hijacker and it took more than 10 months to find out who did it so since that time we have been discussing cyber cooperation over cyber threat and Japan is getting slowly ready to do because last year we established a joint small but joint command to deal with cyber cyber cyber operations so we are now getting ready to to discuss with American counterpart with a single contact point at least at the MOD. The especially I didn't mention this area in Chinese 8 to AD but China adds a weaker side today you know the using those cyber or anti-satellite or the seabed fiber cable network destruction or even the EMP those are the strategy and tactics of the weaker side so there will be a greater chance for China to develop the capability they already have some but will be more and more robust in the future so especially from the policy side and force developing side both use in Japan has to allocate as much and many resources possible to develop the real capability to cope with the growing you know those new domain denial area EMP cyber anti-satellite and the seabed fiber optics network destruction you know US forces supported by JSDF very strong but if the China or any adversary will be able to kill the cut the nerve okay US muscle won't work and China would be able to kill the US forces as if they were shooting the sitting back that is the last thing for us to do so we need to develop the frontline pigment together with this area and this should be involved in the the defense guideline and roles of mission capability in and by this December yep okay thank you so much thank you very much for your participation today we are very much very much pleased to be here and please join me to praise um good hands for for families so much let me let me just close let me close briefly by thanking our colleagues who came across the pacific sack across the river she'll across the street although i guess you just came back from the pacific as well um a lot of the agenda is not new 1990 keep talking since they said uh 1996 but there's a definite urgency to it and it's really striking uh when you listen to the panels how much the US and Japan are going to be depending on each other read the quadrennial defense reviews in black and white in the US we're going to need each other more than ever before for somebody like me was a graduate student under George Packard at the end of the Cold War when most people were predicting this alliance would fall apart and we would be economic enemies it's remarkable it will not put anyone in this room out of business though because as you've heard the more we depend on each other the more complicated it gets we have a lot of things we have to figure out together and we'll keep talking about those so thank you all for coming and thank you for joining us


Hey everyone, welcome back to the Prime 5, the five biggest Nintendo news stories in the last 24 hours. And this is going to be a doozy because included in this episode is an exclusive piece of news about a brand new remastered game coming from Nintendo to Nintendo Switch. Nobody knows about this really except me. So I guess I get to be the source on something. We'll dive into that later. We also have information potentially on a new Zelda edition Switch at some point next year. Pokemon Violet and Scarlet are back in the news as well along with, I think, Mario Plus, Rabbids, Sparks of Hope. We got a really packed show, folks, so no further ado, let's get into the news. I wanna thank you guys all for being here. I would appreciate it if you would drop a like and subscribe to the video. And you know what, let's get into our first story. And it deals with Pokemon, Scarlet, and Violet because according to the official Twitter accounts from Pokemon, we are getting a brand new trailer tomorrow morning. The trailer is dropping at eight a.m. central time and I obviously can't wait. We will definitely cover this trailer, especially any of the new stuff from it in tomorrow's Prime 5. I know the entire game is leaked at this point, but we're staying away from the leaks and sticking with the official media here. So I'm really excited for this one. Now our next story deals with Sparks of Hope because Ubisoft is having a Ubisoft forward this Saturday and Sparks of Hope is one of the featured games. In fact, they have three featured franchises and more. So the forward begins at two p.m. central time on September 10th. It's going to feature Sparks of Hope, skull and bones, and information on the future of Assassin's Creed, which you know there's some leaks and rumors out there about an Assassin's Creed Infinity game. There will be updates to current games as well, like Brawlhalla for Honor, The Crew 2, Anno 1880, and more. This looks like a really exciting event. I won't be covering it live, unfortunately. My youngest son is having his birthday party with friends, but I will definitely be going over all the biggest details from that in the Prime 5 on the following Monday. Next up, we have an update on some rumors that have existed for a while, but now Emily Rogers is just reminding the world that, hey, this stuff is still happening and I'm the original source. And we're talking about a brand new Fire Emblem game in particular, but also Metroid Prime HD. So, she reaffirms current rumors about Metroid Prime HD and a brand new Fire Emblem game. She also notes that, yes, a remastered Fire Emblem game is also in the works. She also mentioned to the world that she was the first one to talk about this stuff before any other insider, so no one should necessarily get credit for this beyond her. And she also reminds everyone that, no, she is not sure what's happening in this month's Nintendo Direct, obviously beyond it existing. So, yeah, good on her. I'm glad that she's just reaffirming because other people are trying to take credit for these rumors when she's the one that was the originating source. This isn't any shade thrown at other people such as, say, Jeff Grubb who's been really on the Metroid Prime remastered train, but yes, she wants to make sure people realize I was the first one to say this. When this happens, make sure I get my credit. I understand that because it can be frustrating when other people get credit for something you were the original source on. Speaking of sources, this is going to be a little bit of a difficult one for me because I am putting myself out there. I have a source who's gonna remain anonymous just because that's the way that they want to be. They want to be anonymous. I have a really good idea of how they got their hands on this information and as somebody who is pretty reliable, however, this is not somebody who you would consider to be a regular leaker. So keep that in mind. This person has shared with me that I should be extremely bullish on F-Zero GX, the GameCube F-Zero game coming to Nintendo Switch and obviously coming in a remastered form. They know that they don't know anything about the Wind Waker and Twilight Princess HD or any of that kind of stuff, but this is one particular game that they have found out about and are very certain is happening at the big Nintendo. So this is just to keep in mind, I know it's my reputation to throw it out there to do this. I still consider this to be a rumor even from my side of things because I haven't seen the remaster stuff myself, but I'm very, very confident in who this person is. Maybe someday they'll choose to want to attach themselves to the story, but for now, F-Zero GX, we all should be extremely excited for a possible remaster coming to Nintendo Switch. Now I don't have any other details such as when it's gonna be unveiled, when it's gonna come out, just that it is happening. So let's just keep that in the back of our minds as we get more Nintendo news over the next year. And last up, our final story comes to us, courtesy of Mike Odyssey who checked the Breath of the Wild 2 patents we covered back in December and found a peculiar update to those patents and that update is, well, the Nintendo Switch Schematics. Now, why does this matter? Because whenever Nintendo Switch Schematics have appeared in a patent that's about gameplay for a game, we've gotten a special edition, believe it or not. No, the patents don't make any reference to the special edition or to the schematics, but Animal Crossing New Horizons had it in theirs. We saw it with Super Smash Bros. Ultimate as well. We're seeing it now with Breath of the Wild 2. We saw it with Splatoon 3. And it's notable that other games that didn't get special editions often don't have the schematics in their patents. I don't know, it's sort of a guess at a correlation that we can actually check and verify across multiple games. Of course, I haven't checked every single game Nintendo has released in every single patent because it would end up taking me years to dig through all the patents. But I did take a basic selection of about 10 games and went through different patents. And the ones that did have special editions all had the schematic. And the ones that didn't have the schematic. But that's obviously a definitive way to look at this. There are probably other Nintendo games that maybe had the schematic but didn't get a special edition. I'm just throwing this out there because it's at least noteworthy that Mike Odyssey has recognized a potential pattern. And I obviously really want a special edition Legend of Zelda Switch. All right, folks, I think that's it. Try to get everything in. Try to get it condensed. That's a lot of really, really, really big news. Really rapid fire, really fast. I hope you guys have a lovely rest of your day. This is Nathanian Ruffle Jants from Nintendo Prime. You just got done watching Prime 5. Hope you decide to subscribe to the channel and we'll catch you in the next video.


If we have an outbreak of fruit fly, our field teams come in and eradicate the pest. So you'll see our guys in orange overalls, they come in and they pick up food off the ground. It's really important to break the life cycle of fruit fly. So if you're home, they'll come in and talk to you and explain what we have to do. We have to gain access to the backyard so we can do some work. If you're not home, we'll leave a card and that'll explain what's going on as well.