Editor's note: Jiang Wenran is a two-time Japan Foundation Fellow, founding director of the China Institute, Mactaggart Research chair emeritus at the University of Alberta, and an advisor at the Institute of Peace & Diplomacy. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

Today, August 15, marks the 81st anniversary of Japan's unconditional surrender in 1945. Just 15 days earlier, on July 31, Tokyo inaugurated its new National Intelligence Bureau (NIB) — a date marking the anniversary of the Kwantung Army's 1937 mobilization, a symbolism noted by regional observers. For a nation that constitutionally renounced war eight decades ago, the NIB is a new institutional keystone of a remilitarization project that prioritizes "guns over butter," locking in massive defence spending at the direct expense of a struggling populace.

The legislative process was staggering. The ruling coalition, lacking an Upper House majority, bulldozed the bill through the House of Representatives in just 41 days. Despite protests that have grown to tens of thousands — with demonstrators warning that the bureau would become a tool to "monitor society and suppress citizens," and prominent lawyer Noriaki Fukuyama denouncing the bill as "an evil law that has completely failed to learn from the lessons of World War II" — the short legislative blitz has sidelined debate while dismantling postwar pacifist guardrails.

The NIB provides the intelligence backbone that underpins Japan's record 9.04 trillion yen ($58 billion) defence budget, which has already met the 2% of GDP target set out in the 2022 National Security Strategy two years ahead of schedule. Yet, Tokyo is now drifting toward the NATO-aligned 3.5% benchmark that Washington has pressed its allies to adopt — a target referenced, though not yet formally adopted, in Japanese Cabinet's July economic and fiscal policy guidelines.

In contrast, China's 2026 defence budget of 1.91 trillion yuan ($275 billion) accounts for about 1.3% of GDP, below the global average of 2.5%. The per capita disparity is starker: Japan's defence spending, 80,000 yen per head, is more than three times that of China, reflecting a density of militarization that places Japan's fiscal health under severe strain: Government debt has topped 1,300 trillion yen, with the IMF projecting a debt-to-GDP ratio of well over 200% for 2026 — the highest among major economies. Debt-servicing costs have crossed 30 trillion yen for the first time, consuming over a quarter of all public expenditure.

To finance the gap, the Takaichi administration is imposing a painful triple squeeze: Issuing massive government bonds, hiking taxes, and slashing non-priority social spending. Japan's general account budget has hit a record for the second consecutive year, reaching 122.3 trillion yen in fiscal 2026, while new bond issuance accounts for 24.2% of the budget. The government is financing its record defence outlay primarily through debt — with roughly 60% of the defence spending reliant on new bond issuance — a burden that will ultimately fall on younger and future generations.

The administration has begun rolling out a "defence tax" trio: Phased tobacco tax hikes beginning in April, a 4% corporate "defence special tax" effective April, and a 1% "defence special income tax" effective January 2027. Meanwhile, medical and educational budgets face continuous compression, and food's share of household spending has reached a 40-year high. Real wages have declined for four consecutive fiscal years. As the Asahi Shimbun commented, guns now take clear priority over butter — yet the public is being asked to foot the bill for missiles it never voted for.

Public backing for this trade-off is thin and contradictory. A Fitch global survey last year ranked Japan last among 91 nations, with just 13.2% of citizens willing to fight. Yet 82% support Prime Minister Takaichi's Taiwan contingency remarks. This glaring gap between bellicose posturing and personal commitment underscores a simple truth: Japan's remilitarization is elite-driven, not popular. Recent domestic media polls show over 60% of the public opposes tax hikes to fund rearmament, 57.2% reject lifting the ban on lethal weapons exports (per a Kyodo News survey), and Takaichi's approval rating has dropped to 41% with dissatisfaction at 44% (per a Mainichi Shimbun poll).

The NIB is the institutional tool that makes this top-down push possible. Elevated from the former Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office, it now holds sweeping authority to compel all ministries — Defence, Foreign Affairs, Justice, and Police — to surrender intelligence data. Its director reports directly to the prime minister, bypassing traditional procedural checks.

This centralization dismantles the decentralized intelligence architecture built under US occupation to curb militarism. Critics warn that the bureau's vague functional boundaries and near-absence of parliamentary oversight invite comparisons to the prewar "Tokkō" (Special Higher Police). By breaking internal firewalls, the NIB lets the government monitor domestic dissent while coordinating offensive capabilities abroad.

The beneficiaries of this concentrated power are clear. Takaichi's right-wing core gains a streamlined tool to push remilitarization with minimal institutional oversight. Defence contractors secure locked-in procurement pipelines — backed by 9.04 trillion yen in statutory defence spending— that are largely insulated from democratic reversal.

The revolving door between defence bureaucrats and industry entrenches this alignment: Defence ministry officials frequently retire into executive roles at major contractors, while three leading heavy industry firms — Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Kawasaki Heavy Industries and IHI — saw their defence order backlogs reach 6.25 trillion yen as of March 2026, with their share prices having nearly doubled from their peak earlier in the year.

The establishment of the NIB, alongside record defence budgets and relaxed weapons export rules, marks a calculated move to reshape the Japanese state. It cements a shift away from the pacifist, economically balanced postwar settlement toward a centralized, militarized "normal country." The 41-day legislative sprint, the 9 trillion yen defence behemoth funded by public austerity, and the historical echoes of July 31 all point to the same reality: Tokyo has built the institutional brain for a remilitarization project whose full costs — fiscal, social, and democratic—are only beginning to surface.

Eighty-one years after Japan's surrender, the road paved by the NIB has shifted from the pacifist constitution, toward a future where the state's intelligence apparatus serves the ambitions of political elites rather than the welfare of the people it claims to protect.