On Monday, March 11, officials from the Japanese Government and the U. S. Government held their first meeting of the `Comprehensive Dialogue on Space' in Tokyo; with the talks between the two countries chiefly pivoting around across-the-board cooperation in space, including joint "maritime domain awareness" concept which pertains to the satellite-based monitoring of ships.

The decision to create the `Comprehensive Dialogue on Space' - the forum which will hold its second meeting in Washington early 2014 - was a result of the talks between U. S. President Barack Obama and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Washington last month.

Going by a joint statement released by the Japanese and U. S. officials, the first meeting of the forum was largely focused on "wide range of interests, including resource and disaster management, environmental monitoring, technology development, scientific discovery, national and international security, and economic growth."

According to Japanese media reports, the key objective behind the space-related collaboration between Japan and the U. S. is to counter China's increasing forcefulness at sea as well as the expansion of the Chinese space exploration programme.

The collaboration comes at a time when there reportedly are high tensions between China and Japan over rival claims to a group of islands in the East China Sea. In fact, other than its tensions with Japan, China is also at variance with a number of Southeast Asian countries over islands in the South China Sea.