Takaichi, Abe and the rise of Japan's neo-militarism

Editor's note: Pan Deng is a special commentator on current affairs for CGTN. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily those of CGTN.

In the heart of Northeast Asia, a tectonic shift is underway, threatening to upend 80 years of relative regional stability.

Under Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, the heiress to late Shinzo Abe's radical ideology, Japan is systematically dismantling the legal and moral scaffolding of its postwar pacifism. From the historic lifting of the lethal arms export ban on April 21 to the aggressive drive for constitutional revision, Takaichi's recent moves are not isolated policy adjustments. They are the fulfillment of a multigenerational project to overcome the postwar regime and revive the very spirit Japan once promised to bury.

The genesis of the 'Abe Doctrine'

To understand the present, one must excavate the past. The "Abe Doctrine" did not originate with Shinzo Abe, but with his grandfather, Nobusuke Kishi. Kishi, a Class A war crime suspect turned prime minister, viewed the pacifist 1947 Constitution as a humiliating foreign imposition that reduced Japan to a third-rate nation. His life's mission, specifically the 1960 revision of the US-Japan Security Treaty was the first step in a long game strategy to restore Japan as a normal military power.

The original treaty paved the way for the presence of US military bases on Japanese soil with the two nations committing to defend each other if one or the other was attacked. The 1960 revision made it more reciprocal.

Abe spent his career operationalizing this ancestral grievance. Through a sophisticated blend of "Abenomics" and "proactive contribution to peace," he moved Japan from passive pacifism to active deterrence. His landmark 2015 security legislation, which allowed for collective self-defense, created the legislative momentum that Takaichi has now inherited. This doctrine was never about simple defense. It was about the restoration of a sovereign right to wage war, masked under the contemporary parlance of international cooperation.

Takaichi is the ultimate product of this lineage. Her rise within the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) was meticulously cultivated by Abe, who recognized in her a true believer capable of pushing boundaries he himself found politically sensitive. From her appointment as the first female chair of the LDP's Policy Research Council in 2012 to Abe's explicit endorsement of her 2021 party president bid, Takaichi has been the vessel for the Abe wing's most radical aspirations.

Today, Takaichi's governance is the "Abe Doctrine" in its final form. While Abe was once seen as a pragmatist who often took two steps forward and one step back to manage public sentiment, Takaichi, bolstered by her February 2026 supermajority, has abandoned such caution. Her ideological alignment with Abe has manifested in a "post postwar" reality, characterized by the creation of a national intelligence agency to centralize state secrets and the front-loading of 2% of Japan's GDP on defense spending. For Takaichi, the mentor's legacy is not just a memory to be honored, but a blueprint to be completed.

Transmutation of militarism: Modern policy and ancient ambition

The most unsettling aspect of the Takaichi administration is the unmistakable resonance between her neoconservative agenda and the standard features of Japan's historical militarism. This is not a crude imitation of the 1930s, but a sophisticated transmutation of its core tenets into 21st century governance.

The traditional supremacy of the military over civilian life has been replaced by a centralization of executive power that integrates military utility into the very heart of the state. By seeking to codify the Japan Self Defense Forces within Article 9, which renounces war and forbids maintaining "land, sea and air forces," Takaichi is effectively ending the era of civilian distrust and restoring the armed forces as a primary instrument of statecraft.

This structural shift is fueled by a modern iteration of the "Fukoku Kyohei" ("Enrich the Country, Strengthen the Armed Forces") philosophy. Takaichi's lifting of the lethal arms export ban on April 21 treats military hardware as a fundamental economic engine, reviving the dangerous historical precedent that national prosperity is inextricably linked to the production of lethal force. This economic security agenda seeks to dominate regional technology supply chains in much the same way the previous era sought to secure resources through physical occupation.

Furthermore, the spiritual mobilization of citizens continues through a refusal to acknowledge historical accountability. Takaichi's persistent offerings at the controversial Yasukuni Shrine that commemorates war criminals and her rejection of what she terms Jigyaku Shikan – literally meaning a "masochistic view of history," a term coined by Japanese neo-nationalists to criticize the postwar, self-critical interpretation of Japan's war history, serve to reconstruct a national identity centered on pride rather than penance.

When combined with the erosion of political pluralism under a dominant supermajority and an expansionist security logic that views a Taiwan contingency as a "survival-threatening situation," the parallels to the Meiji era (1868-1912) quest for regional dominance become impossible to ignore. This is a proactive realism that relies on extraterritorial power projection, a mindset that once brought the region to the brink of ruin.

A call for global vigilance

The international community cannot afford to be lulled into a false sense of security by the democratic veneer of Takaichi's reforms. History serves as a stark reminder that when a nation with a deep militarist tradition begins to dismantle the legal brakes on its power while simultaneously stoking historical revisionism, the resulting trajectory rarely leads to peace.

For the West, there must be a profound wariness of an ally that seeks to normalize its status by unlearning the painful lessons of its own tragedy. For the region, vigilance remains the only viable defense against a state that increasingly identifies its so-called national beauty with the gleam of new weaponry.

Japan's road forward under Takaichi is not a path to a shared future, but a retreat into a past that ignored the boundaries of sovereignty and the value of collective stability. For the sake of global peace, the world must look past the immediate diplomacy and recognize the underlying currents of this assertive and dangerous transformation.

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