The Japanese government had already publicly expressed its concern about the possibility that China might use force to resolve the Taiwan question even before the Chinese responded in 1995-96 to what they regarded as unacceptable provocations with threatening military exercises and the launching of missiles near Taiwan’s two main ports.
The Japanese government expressed its concern in public at missiles being directed to the north of Taiwan near the territorial waters of one of its most southern islets.
The episode also affected Japanese public opinion so that the announcement in April 1996 of the agreement about strategic guidelines with the US did not attract much domestic criticism.
Yet not long before, popular opposition to the American military presence had been raised, significantly as a consequence of the rape of a Japanese teenager by three American marines in Okinawa.