An era of harder security is beginning in Takaichi’s Japan

Jake Thrupp

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Don’t underestimate the strength of Japan’s strategic transformation, above all in its hardening determination to face accumulating threats. The shift becomes clear to anyone who engages these days with Japanese officials and defence analysts, as I discovered at the Security and Defence PLuS Joint Conference on Comprehensive Security in the Indo-Pacific, held on 14 and 17 November.

This shift is being driven in large part by the new political leadership of Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and her mentee, Defence Minister Shinjiro Koizumi, who have pledged to accelerate defence spending.

But an even more important shift is in Japan’s strategic mindset. Tokyo is becoming more willing to call out the threat posed by Chinese aggression and to shoulder a greater share of the regional security burden. Takaichi’s recent break from strategic ambiguity, describing a conflict in the Taiwan Strait as a potential ‘existential crisis situation’ for Japan, was a case in point. It was bold statement she later softened only marginally, but by then the message had been delivered.

Expect this clarity to flow directly into Japan’s next National Security Strategy. Scheduled for release between late 2026 and early 2027, the strategy will almost certainly frame China as Japan’s central challenge and serve as the precursor to a defence–industrial expansion not seen in decades.