U.S. envoy to Japan visits Okinawa islands a stone’s throw from Taiwan

TOKYO — U.S. Ambassador to Japan Rahm Emanuel on Friday visited Yonaguni, a remote Japanese island close to Taiwan, signaling to China that the U.S. and Japan are poised to jointly deal with any Taiwan contingency.

Yonaguni, Japan’s westernmost territory, lies 160 kilometers from Taipei and 2,000 km from Tokyo. It is among the remote islands emphasized in the defense ministry’s “southwest shift,” a policy to strengthen the nation’s defense capabilities as tensions mount along the Taiwan Strait.