Is Japan a "great power"?

The defense minister said so in a recent speech, uttering a phrase rarely used by the country's political leaders. It's a notion that touches nerves among the Japanese public and neighbors still wary of Japan's last full-fledged engagement in global power politics 80 years ago. But it's a sticky question that Japan, Asia and the U.S. will have to ponder with growing frequency, as Tokyo stakes out a bigger policing role in Asia, and as China forces the issue by laying out its own "great...