Commentary: Japan needs deterrence and renewal - not managed decline

More than eight decades after the end of the second world war, the country must rethink its role in the world, says this writer for the Financial Times.

TOKYO: The 81st anniversary of the end of the second world war will pass in Japan this weekend amid a deafening silence. Beneath it lies a deeper affliction: a fear of sovereignty that has produced a sclerotic approach to the country’s future. A recent Gallup survey of 45 countries found only 9 per cent of Japanese citizens would fight for their country - the lowest of all nations surveyed.

Japan’s education system has reinforced this attitude, even as China expands its economic and military reach and North Korea continues its provocations. Our curriculum is still shaped by postwar assumptions rather than today’s realities, which demand a serious focus on deterring threats to national security.

But what should deterrence mean for Japan today?

THREE PRESSING AREAS

The first and most pressing component is economic strength. Japan’s workforce is shrinking, and no technological ingenuity can compensate for a demographic crisis left unaddressed; a serious immigration framework, built on skills and genuine integration, is overdue. For thirty years, deflation lulled Japan into comfortable numbness: sustaining defunct industries and protecting existing jobs rather than creating new ones.

The second pillar is hard power. Japan needs to spend more on defence, develop capabilities - including missiles, drones, and possibly nuclear submarines - and stop treating this as a cause for embarrassment. A country that cannot protect itself narrows its options in everything else.

The third is soft power - and here Japan is already stronger than it assumes. The Japan International Cooperation Agency’s development work, our overseas aid and cultural exports like manga and anime have built a reservoir of goodwill across Asia. Nations that admire you are less inclined to threaten you. We should take this soft power as seriously as we take missiles and ships.

Critics argue Japan cannot afford stronger deterrence. They are wrong. A stronger economy is precisely what finances greater security - and without economic renewal, no level of defence spending is sustainable.

WHAT JAPAN NEEDS

Japan will need honest leadership rather than politicians who revert to the old reflex of subsidy cheques when electricity bills or fuel prices rise, sparing citizens the discomfort of seeing the dangers of energy dependence and strained public finances. Leaders must have the courage to level with the public and pair a sense of urgency with a credible positive vision. Subsidies are a political escape route; they blunt urgency, freeze the status quo and starve the animal spirits that only genuine pressure produces.

The business community must also step forward. Industrial revival and deterrence are no longer separate projects but one and the same.

Semiconductors, robotics, AI and precision manufacturing are inherently dual-use and Japan’s corporate sector must lead the shift with urgency, in partnership with government, by dismantling institutional barriers - including the self-imposed university ban on defence research and regulatory silos that restrict labour mobility. Eighty years after the war’s end - we cannot survive with an education system still shaped by postwar assumptions rather than the world as it is.

Finally, the country requires a recovery of national confidence, having grown accustomed to managing decline rather than pursuing renewal. Deterrence does not start with missiles or budget lines. It starts with a society that believes in its own future. A nation that has lost that belief will struggle to defend itself. This is the hardest truth in the entire debate, and the one most rarely spoken aloud.

We must also build a broader economic and security coalition. While America remains indispensable, Japan’s vision of a free and open Indo-Pacific offers like-minded nations - India, Australia, the Philippines, South Korea and others - a common purpose and a foundation for regional prosperity through factors such as integrated supply chains. A coalition cannot guarantee peace, but it raises the price of aggression beyond what most are willing to pay.

There is one thing Japan must never surrender: the trust earned across eight decades as a peaceful nation. Japan can acquire real deterrence and remain, at its core, the peaceful country it chose to become in 1945. That peace was never free. The past generation paid with restraint; this generation must pay for the next eighty years with clarity and will - and accept that no one else will bear the cost.