The visit of the Japanese Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, to the American President, Joe Biden, this Friday (13), crowns a process of historical reversal with wide geopolitical repercussions.
Japan is rapidly moving away from its postwar pacifist tradition, embracing militaristic policies that could turn the island into a proverbial aircraft carrier for the Western league that looks with trepidation at the rise of Xi Jinping’s China.
Tokyo, however, has its own agenda, and Kishida made that clear by visiting other leaders of the G7, the club of the rich, before meeting Biden. Its military escalation includes record spending in the sector, a military cooperation agreement with the British and the first multinational defense project, the construction of an advanced fighter with the United Kingdom and Italy, which dismissed the Americans.
This does not, of course, take away Washington’s primacy when it comes to the Japanese insertion in the world. As I said to Sheet Chancellor Yoshimasa Hayashi, “the Japan-US alliance remains the foundation of his country’s foreign and national security policy”.
All courtesy of the turbulent 20th century, which began with the militaristic expansionism of the Japanese Empire, the China of its time in the context of Asia-Pacific and without the reservations of today: Tokyo brutally occupied its neighbors, such as Chinese Manchuria or Korean Peninsula.
The process led to World War II, in which the empire was torn apart, 2.5 million Japanese died and the country saw two American atomic explosions. The Allied victory led to the reorganization of the country’s political life through occupation.
At the head was the American general Douglas MacArthur, who outlined the three principles that the US wanted to see imposed in the new Japanese Constitution: the end of the absolute power of the emperor and the nobility, the implantation of a British-style parliamentarism and, most importantly, the incapacitation country’s military.
Indeed, the 1947 Charter is called the MacArthur Constitution, which did not sit well with any nationalist in the decades that followed, during which it was never amended. In 1954, the Japan Self-Defense Forces were created for the purpose in its name, in partnership with the Americans.
The pacifism imposed by Washington replaced the militarism of the empire, but gained ground in Japanese life: the suffering caused by the bombing of the archipelago was immeasurable. Monuments in rebuilt Hiroshima are a powerful reminder of this, as are the “peace pagodas” dotted around the world by the Buddhist monk Nichidatsu Fujii (1885-1985). But the backlash was just as strong, as ultranationalist movements prove—the writer Yukio Mishima’s ritual suicide in 1970, after attempting a quixotic coup to restore imperial powers, is a notorious symbol of this tension.
In more recent years, in practice the Armed Forces were already circumventing their limitations little by little, as in the transformation of helicopter carriers into aircraft carriers in practice, when buying American F-35B vertical takeoff fighters. Under the influential Shinzo Abe, the longest-lasting post-war prime minister who resigned for health reasons in 2020 and was assassinated last year, the debate gained another level with the perception reported by Chancellor Hayashi that China is “the biggest unprecedented strategic challenge to ensuring the peace and security of Japan and the world”.
Kishida is carrying out the reaction, careful not to put all his eggs in the American basket, scalded by Washington’s lack of commitment when Donald Trump was president. Even a more consistent alliance with historic rival South Korea is being considered to contain Kim Jong-un’s nuclear dictatorship in the northern half of the peninsula.
Countries are also concerned about the increasing joint action of Chinese and Russian forces in the region, which comes in the wake of Western pressure on Moscow over the Ukraine War.
Thus, Japan announced the largest military package in its postwar history, aiming to double its defense spending to 2% of GDP within five years. It has installed coastal defense missiles on Okinawa, the closest group of islands to China — and to Taiwan, the autonomous island that Beijing promises to take for itself.
This week, he revealed that the US will have a new Marine base, with advanced intelligence capabilities and equipped with anti-ship missiles. Icing on the cake is a movement to change the Constitution, freeing up the military for offensive action and burying the MacArthur doctrine.
Thus, Biden’s blessing to the Japanese defense effort ends a cycle started by the Americans in 1945. The president had already started this process by giving weight to the Quad, a group that unites the USA, Japan, India and Australia to face China. In addition to the military muscle an economic giant can provide, Biden is also eyeing getting Tokyo into an important aspect of Cold War 2.0: the dispute over chips. Since October, the US imposes a draconian regime of vetoing the export of semiconductors to the Chinese, aiming to delay its industry and military area.
Japan is sympathetic to the measure, but tries not to get involved, because it is an important player in the sector, with 27% of the chip forging equipment market, and China is the destination of 25% of its exports. Even if he is not successful in this, the American president has already achieved the main thing in geopolitical terms with the remilitarization of Japan.
With a wealth of experience honed over 4+ years in journalism, I bring a seasoned voice to the world of news. Currently, I work as a freelance writer and editor, always seeking new opportunities to tell compelling stories in the field of world news.
