Ballistic Missile and its threats

A ballistic missile (BM) is a a missile that has a ballistic trajectory over most of its flight path

The United States divides missiles into four range classes.

Intercontinental Ballistic Missile ICBM           over    5500 kilometers
Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missile IRBM    3000 to 5500 kilometers
Medium-Range Ballistic Missile MRBM       1000 to 3000 kilometers
Short-Range Ballistic missile SRBM            up to 1000 kilometers

Ballistic orbit

image: wiki

Here is the list of Asia-Pacific nations that possess ballistic missiles powers. Includes Afghanistan, China, India, North Korea, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam. 

Chinese PLA has possessed a large number of ballistic missiles (including short-range, long-range and intercontinental), which posed an emerging threats to US and its allies in Asia Pacific.

No wonder that Japan doesn't possess this kind of offensive weapons even the nation's army is on world top. Because of  Article 9, has been determined that Japan cannot hold offensive military weapons — this has been interpreted to mean that Japan cannot have ICBMs, nuclear weapons, aircraft carriers or bomber fleets.