Japan’s rightward shift puts it on a collision course with China

I underestimated Japan’s determination to ruffle China’s feathers. In a November 2023 column, I argued that the apparently cordial meeting between President Xi Jinping and then US president Joe Biden in the US unsettled Japan, which wanted to attain its goal of becoming a “normal country” again.

In a column last December, I said Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s hardened position against China – exemplified by her November 7 speech saying China’s forceful takeover of Taiwan could pose an existential threat to Japan and suggesting her country might have to intervene militarily together with the US – was a small part of the great power politics between Washington and Beijing.

I still believe that. However, I didn’t expect that Takaichi, a relative unknown in Japanese politics until she won the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) leadership race last year and became Japan’s prime minister, could have mustered such popular support so quickly that she won the hastily called House of Representatives election on February 8 by a landslide.