Japanese new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, who took office less than a month ago, has already plunged Japan's regional diplomacy into turmoil, reopened old wounds in Asia, and alarmed observers with an agenda that appears to revive the most dangerous tendencies in Japan's modern political history.

Her latest provocation – linking China's Taiwan region to a fabricated Japanese "survival-threatening situation" – raises unsettling questions about where she intends to steer Japan next.

A decade-old fiction, revived for a new agenda

The term "survival-threatening situation" is not new. It was introduced a decade ago by former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who forced through a controversial security reform package to circumvent Japan's postwar pacifist constitution. Under Abe's framework, Japan would be allowed to exercise the right of collective self-defense if a country "closely related to Japan" were attacked, even without a direct attack on the country.

The definition was deliberately vague. Critics argued that the concept served one purpose: to create a narrative loophole that would allow Japan to break free from constitutional restraints on military expansion and overseas operations. Most Japanese constitutional scholars still regard the reinterpretation as unconstitutional.

Takaichi, who openly brands herself as Abe's political heir, has now taken the narrative to an even more extreme place. During a Diet session on November 7, she insinuated that a "Taiwan contingency" could trigger Japan's so-called survival-threatening situation, implying possible Japanese military involvement in the Taiwan question.

Her claim is not only legally indefensible but historically absurd. Taiwan is not a "foreign country closely related to Japan." Nor does the Taiwan question endanger the "lives, freedoms, or happiness" of Japanese citizens. As Ukeru Magosaki, a former Japanese Foreign Ministry official, bluntly noted, Taiwan is part of China; how could this possibly constitute a Japanese "survival-threatening situation?"

The wider concern, analysts warn, is the pattern. Every major act of Japanese militarist expansion in the early 20th century was couched in "survival-threatening situation"-like rhetoric, from the fabricated September 18 Incident of 1931 to the Lugou Bridge Incident in 1937. Those narratives paved the way for Japan's invasion of neighboring countries, causing immeasurable suffering across Asia. Today, Takaichi's revival of that same linguistic playbook is a red flag that cannot be ignored.

A record of historical revisionism and provocation

Takaichi's provocative remarks on Taiwan are not an isolated episode. They are a part of her consistent pattern of revisionist ideology and confrontation with China.

Just days after taking office, she posted back-to-back photos on social media of meetings with personnel from the authorities of China's Taiwan region on the sidelines of APEC meetings. She referred to a participant as a "senior adviser to the presidential office," openly violating Japan's own commitments to the one-China principle. Beijing lodged strong protests.

On November 3, her government awarded a high state honor – the Order of the Rising Sun – to Hsieh Chang-ting, a known Taiwan separatist.

Her long political career is filled with similarly confrontational positions. She has questioned the 1995 Murayama Statement apologizing for Japan's wartime atrocities. She has denied the Nanjing Massacre. From 2014 to 2025, she has visited the Yasukuni Shrine, where 14 convicted Class-A Japanese war criminals from World War II are enshrined, 11 times in 12 years. 

Observers also note that her administration is stacked with members of a "pro-Taiwan" parliamentary group, signaling an intentional political alignment. 

Behind the China provocations: a militarist agenda

Perhaps the most worrying dimension of Takaichi's rhetoric is the broader policy shift she is engineering. She has aggressively pushed for extraordinary increases in defense spending, relaxation of weapons export restrictions, and expansion of Japan's offensive military capabilities.

According to Kyodo News, Takaichi is even exploring revisions to Japan's Three Non-Nuclear Principles: not possessing, not producing, and not allowing the introduction of nuclear weapons into Japanese territory. If modified, the move could open the door for U.S. nuclear assets to be hosted on Japanese soil, a seismic departure from decades of postwar policy.

The Three Non-Nuclear Principles were first declared in the Diet, Japan's parliament, by then-Japanese Prime Minister Eisaku Sato in 1967 and are viewed as a national credo.

If the principle is changed, it will represent a significant shift in the country's security policy and is certain to draw domestic and international backlash, Kyodo News noted.

An editorial published in the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun also noted that, as a country that suffered atomic bombings, Japan has positioned the Three Non-Nuclear Principles as a national policy, which has long received widespread support from the Japanese people.

How far will Takaichi go?

Wu Jinan, a former president of the Shanghai Association of Japanese Studies, believes Takaichi's recent string of provocative moves is closely tied to the temporary political "honeymoon period" of the new cabinet, with early polls showing high approval ratings.

She seems to have been carried away by that moment, Wu said. "It gave her the illusion that she could act without restraint."

Yet, as Wu pointed out, criticism of Takaichi has been building. Her approach to the United States has been dismissed by some in Tokyo's policy circles as "obsequious." She has been accused of backpedaling on an informal understanding with the Japan Innovation Party over the reduction of parliamentary seats. She also scrapped promised subsidies, drawing fire for breaking election pledges. 

A Japanese magazine has even begun speculating about the potential short lifespan of the Takaichi administration, Wu noted, suggesting that the prime minister's early bravado is already showing signs of overreach.

For Wu, the most alarming element is Takaichi's willingness to cross political and diplomatic lines that no postwar Japanese prime minister has ever approached. "On the most sensitive 'red line' issue, no Japanese political leader, let alone someone occupying the prime minister's office, has said anything like this," he said. "It disregards Japan's own constitution, the long-established consensus on the one-China principle, and the four political documents that underpin China–Japan relations."

According to Wu, this is why Takaichi's trajectory may inevitably follow a "high start, low finish" arc. The early surge of confidence has encouraged radical messaging aimed at consolidating her hold on power. But the very extremity of her statements risks alienating both domestic constituencies and Japan's regional partners, accelerating a downward slide that many observers in Tokyo now view as difficult to avoid.