Japan announced on Tuesday changes to its refugee system that activists said will make the country, which accepted less than a dozen asylum seekers last year, increasingly hard to reach for people in need of protection.
Japan and ally the United States can start making plans for a possible conflict with China after the expected enactment of defense legislation this week, but Japan will not be sending troops to back up U.S.-led operations against Islamic State.
More than half of voters in Japan are opposed to their government's plans to enact legislation this month that would allow Japanese troops to fight abroad for the first time since World War Two, a newspaper poll showed on Monday.
Floods that swept houses off foundations and crushed them under landslides spread across Japan on Friday as more rivers burst their banks, leaving at least 23 people missing and forcing more than 100,000 to flee.
