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| Japanese people gathered outside the prime minister's office to protest Sanae Takaichi's remarks on Taiwan in Tokyo, capital of Japan, November 25, 2025. |
In mid-November 2025, Japan's new prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, in a moment of parliamentary pressure, crossed a line that Beijing had long drawn in red ink. Asked repeatedly about a hypothetical Taiwan contingency, she abandoned the usual diplomatic evasions and declared that a military crisis over the island would constitute a “survival-threatening situation” (存亡の危機) for Japan, thereby potentially triggering collective self-defence and direct Japanese military involvement. The phrase was not new in Japan's internal strategic debate, technically rooted in Japan's 2015 security legislation, but uttering it aloud from the prime minister's seat, in the same year that marks the 80th anniversary of Japan's surrender in the war against Chinese resistance, guaranteed a furious reaction.
China's response was swift, multi-layered, and calibrated to inflict maximum pain with minimal escalation. Travel advisories citing “rising Japanese nationalism and militarism” were issued within hours. By the following week, Chinese online travel agencies reported the cancellation of nearly half a million airline tickets to Japan—an economic stab that hurt hotels, retailers, and airlines far more than any diplomatic note could. Simultaneously, Chinese coastguard vessels conducted prolonged patrols in the waters around the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands, a reminder that Beijing can tighten the screws in the East China Sea whenever it wishes. For good measure, domestic and social media revived archival footage of Japanese wartime atrocities, ensuring that popular sentiment on the mainland remained amplified.
Japan suddenly looked isolated. Washington, Tokyo's treaty ally, offered no public support and quietly proceeded with the planned withdrawal of intermediate-range missiles it had only recently deployed to Okinawa. Seoul postponed scheduled joint exercises with Japan. Even in Taipei, some voices expressed unease at being dragged into a Japanese security narrative that might provoke without delivering protection. Tokyo had managed, in a single afternoon, to alienate virtually every important actor in its neighbourhood.
This episode was not merely a diplomatic gaffe; it exposed the widening gap between Japan's lingering Cold War reflexes and the realities of a post-American Asia. The prime minister, long associated with the neo-revisionist wing of the Liberal Democratic Party, may genuinely believe that Japan must prepare for direct involvement in any Taiwan crisis. Yet the costs of signalling such readiness far outweigh any conceivable benefit, especially for a country whose strategic and economic circumstances are uniquely precarious.
First, Japan cannot secure itself in northeast Asia without at least a minimum of Chinese acquiescence. The North Korean nuclear and missile threat looms over both Tokyo and Seoul. Any serious crisis on the Korean peninsula would require crisis-management channels with Beijing, which has more influence in Pyongyang than any other regional capital. Japan's own defence planners privately acknowledge that deterring or managing a DPRK contingency without Chinese coordination is, at best, enormously difficult. Antagonising Beijing over Taiwan rhetoric makes that cooperation less, not more, likely.
Second, Japan remains deeply economically intertwined with China despite years of “de-risking” rhetoric. China is Japan's largest trading partner; Japanese companies employ millions in China and rely on its market for profits that subsidise R&D at home. Bilateral currency swap lines, quietly expanded in 2024 to nearly $60 billion, are a vital backstop against yen volatility. Regional financial stability—especially liquidity support during crises—has repeatedly depended on Tokyo and Beijing acting in concert rather than at cross-purposes. Turning the relationship into open hostility would be self-harm on a grand scale.
Third, the resurgence of militarist sentiment in Japan, while still a minority taste, is genuinely alarming to the rest of Asia. Memories of imperial aggression are not abstract history lessons; they are lived familial trauma across the region. When a Japanese prime minister uses language that echoes pre-war legal justifications for expansion, neighbours notice. The fact that such views remain confined to a faction within the LDP is cold comfort when that faction now occupies the prime minister's office. Quietly but firmly, the region needs to signal that a remilitarised Japan openly contemplating intervention thousands of kilometres from its shores is neither welcome nor safe—for Japan itself most of all.
Finally, Japan's long-term energy and food security dilemmas point in exactly the opposite direction from confrontation with its continental neighbours. Japan imports virtually all of its oil and over 60 per cent of its food calories. Russia, despite sanctions, remains a critical supplier of LNG from Sakhalin-2; Tokyo fought hard (and successfully) for exemptions that allow those purchases to continue. China dominates the processing of rare earths and battery materials without which Japan's industrial base would grind to a halt. A Japan that chooses ideological alignment with a waning Western bloc over pragmatic regional partnerships is choosing strategic vulnerability.
The broader canvas is the end of the post-1945 American order in Asia. Pax Americana is fraying; the United States has demonstrated in Ukraine and the Middle East that it prefers proxy wars to direct engagement when its own cities are at risk. In Taipei, Lai Ching-te has begun speaking of Taiwan as “Asia's Israel”—a revealing metaphor that concedes reliance on distant patrons while quietly hedging by courting both Washington and alternative security concepts. It has incidentally caused adverse reaction in a number of quarters, given the horrors of Gaza for which Israel —and the U.S.—are directly responsible. South Korea's political class increasingly debates nuclear latency. Even Japan's own defence white papers now include scenarios in which the U.S. might not come to its aid promptly or at all.
This episode also carries an unambiguous message to Manila, to the south of Taiwan island. The Philippines, under the Marcos Jr. administration, has moved sharply toward the American camp, granting additional bases under the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement and conducting increasingly large Balikatan exercises that now openly simulate Taiwan-contingency scenarios. Beijing's swift, multi-domain retaliation against Japan—economic, maritime, and informational—serves as a live demonstration of what awaits any regional actor that chooses to position itself on the front line of a Taiwan conflict. Manila is watching closely. President Marcos is already battered by cascading domestic crises: soaring rice prices, impeachment threats against the Vice-President, and a widening senate investigation into offshore gaming and alleged drug-war cover-ups. The last thing his administration needs is a real-time Chinese blockade of Scarborough Shoal or a sudden freeze on the $20 billion-plus in annual trade and investment that keeps the Philippine economy afloat. However much Washington may cheerlead, the Philippines now has a vivid case study showing that involvement in a Taiwan crisis would begin with Chinese pressure and end, most likely, with American absence. Hesitation in Manila is all but guaranteed.
In this fluid environment, China is using the current crisis to consolidate a new normal. The extended coastguard presence around the Diaoyu/Senkakus will not be reversed; Beijing has signalled that any Japanese prime ministerial statement crossing the Taiwan “red line” will be met with tangible, incremental assertions of control. Meanwhile, Chinese diplomats are working methodically with ASEAN capitals and Seoul to reinforce the principle that Taiwan is an internal Chinese matter and that extra-regional intervention would be illegitimate and destabilising. Russia—also a nuclear power in the Pacific—has a revamped security arrangement with the DPRK, and should also not be discounted as an agent of regional relevance.
Japan has very little to gain from resisting this consolidation and a great deal to lose. A wiser course would be to let the current storm pass, refrain from further provocative rhetoric, and begin the patient work of rebuilding workable relations with Beijing. That will require recognising that Asia's future stability will be built by Asians, and that China will be central to that architecture.
Regional capitals should deliver this message privately and firmly: Japan's security and prosperity depend on integration with its neighbourhood, not on nostalgic gestures toward a world order that no longer exists. Militarised posturing over issues where Japan has no vital interests and no capacity to decide outcomes is a luxury it can no longer afford.
China, for its part, has made its point. It has reminded Japan—and the region—that the Taiwan issue is non-negotiable, and that attempts to internationalise it will be met with costs. Having done so, Beijing would be wise to leave the door open for a gradual de-escalation once Tokyo signals a return to disciplined ambiguity.
Asia does not need another crisis born of wounded pride or historical grievance. It needs sober recognition that power realities have shifted, and that pragmatic accommodation among strong neighbours is the only sustainable path. Japan, more than most, has every incentive to choose that path—before its room for choice narrows further.
