Japan's dangerous relapse into new militarist mindset

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A country that once pledged "never again" to take the path to war is quietly relearning the habits of hard power, wrapping a new militarism in the reassuring language of "self-defense" and "regional stability."

Beneath the language of deterrence and "survival-threatening situations," Japan's policies under its Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi mark a dangerous relapse into the very militarist mindset that once plunged Asia into catastrophe.

The most visible warning sign is the scale and speed of Japan's defense buildup.

The country's construction of a new military base on Mageshima Island has raised concerns, which, according to Japanese media TBS, is proceeding at a rapid pace toward the completion in March 2030. Worse still, Takaichi, as Kyodo News reported, has been considering reviewing the country's Three Non-Nuclear Principles.

Record-breaking budgets have become the new normal, with the Japanese government racing to hit a 2 percent of GDP target for defense spending, a significant departure from its post-war tradition that for decades capped it at about 1 percent. Year after year, the government has approved sharp increases to fund long‑range cruise missiles, stand‑off strike systems, and major upgrades that go well beyond the minimal requirements of territorial defense.

By framing every budget increase as an inevitable reaction to external threats, Tokyo avoids answering the fundamental question: why is a country with a pacifist constitution spending at unprecedented levels on offensive-capable systems. This is not a cosmetic adjustment to match inflation. It is a transformation of Japan's military posture, designed to give the self-defense forces tools that look increasingly like offensive capabilities in everything but name.

Nowhere is this shift clearer than in the way Takaichi talked about the Taiwan question. Takaichi has argued that an "attack" on the Taiwan region could constitute a "survival‑threatening situation" for Japan, language that under Japan's security legislation can open the door to military involvement.

She has floated this linkage not as an abstract legal question but as a practical scenario that the country must prepare for, signaling that Japanese forces could, in effect, fight in a conflict over the Taiwan region under certain conditions. When regional criticism mounted, she did not retreat from the core idea.

This is politics by trial balloon. Leaders push the envelope with provocative formulations, walk them back just enough to placate immediate outrage, and in the process normalize what would once have been unthinkable. What used to be a cautious stance on the Taiwan question is being quietly rewritten.

Yet Tokyo has not bothered to accompany this rhetorical drift with a transparent, principled statement of its position. Instead, it offers vague reassurances of continuity while steadily increasing the likelihood that Japan will be drawn into a potential conflict in the region.

This ambiguity is a recipe for miscalculation. By hinting at intervention while avoiding an explicit clarification, Japan heightens uncertainty for all parties, increasing the risk of miscalculation in a crisis and allowing militarists to invoke the Taiwan question whenever they need a new justification for domestic rearmament.

The most alarming aspect is not any single speech or procurement decision, but the pattern: rapid military expansion, revisionist signals on history, and inflammatory messaging about the Taiwan question presented under the reassuring banner of "defense."

Takaichi's own political background reinforces these concerns, with visits to the Yasukuni Shrine and statements downplaying wartime atrocities now intersecting with a hawkish foreign‑policy agenda. When a leader with such a record becomes the chief advocate of military expansion, neighbors are justified in seeing "defense normalization" as a euphemism for renewed militarist ambitions.

For Japan – a nation whose modern history includes the devastation it inflicted on others and the atomic horrors it suffered itself, a new militarism mindset is perilous for not just China and Japan, but the entire region. The revival of militarist sentiment beneath the cloak of "defense" is leading the region nowhere.

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