In the spring of 2015 Tokyo also unveiled what it called a ‘helicopter-carrying destroyer’. It didn’t take a military expert to notice that the vessel was as big as the Japanese aircraft carriers of the Second World War, which are forbidden by the surrender terms of 1945. The ship can be adapted for fixed-wing aircraft but the defence minister issued a statement saying that he was ‘not thinking of using it as an aircraft carrier’. This is akin to buying a motorbike then saying that because you were not going to use it as a motorbike, it is a pushbike. The Japanese now have an aircraft carrier.
