Introducing 'Peak Japan' (And Why It Matters)

Brad Glosserman

Security, Asia

Tokyo’s international influence is likely to be at its apogee, and will level off and eventually decline. 

Recent changes in Japanese security policy have been applauded as ‘the biggest revisions in the country’s defense policy since adoption of the 1947 constitution’. There is a new National Security Council, a National Security Strategy, a National Secrecy Law, newNational Defense Program Guidelines, reinterpretation of the Constitution to permit Japan to exercise the right of collective self-defense, new US-Japan bilateral defense guidelines, and security legislation that turns those documents into deliverables. That legislation took effect this week.

Alarmists worry about a resuscitation of Japanese militarism. More sensible and discerning assessments point out that these changes are evolutionary and adaptations to changing circumstances, ‘a small, yet essential, step for Japan as it travels the path of a normal security policy’. Amidst the handwringing and back slapping, little attention is being paid to structural factors that conspire to limit Japan’s capacity to sustain a higher and more expansive hard-security profile. Japan’s demographic trajectory and the inability of Abenomics to gain traction mean that Tokyo’s international influence is likely to be at its apogee, and will level off and eventually decline. Tokyo won’t be irrelevant, but we may well be witnessing ‘Peak Japan’.