Following the events of World War II, the Asian nation of Japan changed its military use drastically. The country vowed never to use its military for offensive maneuvers and went into active pacifism.
In 2025 and 2026, this has changed with rising tensions between China and Taiwan, which current Japanese Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, believes serves as a threat to the island’s national security.
China and Taiwan’s decades of geopolitical tension and conflicts have been getting tenser and tenser, coming up in 2026.
China and Taiwan have had disputes over sovereignty. China believes Taiwan should merge with the mainland and unite as one country. Taiwan disagrees with that, wanting to remain an independent nation separate from mainland China.
China is under the rule of the Chinese communist party, they fall under the name of the People’s Republic of China. Meanwhile, Taiwan is called the Republic of China, an island separated from the mainland by the Taiwan Strait, a waterway cutting through the two lands. Taiwan is declared as a self-governing country that runs as a democracy. (Council on Foreign Relations).
Japan is 1,400 miles northeast of Taiwan, and is considered a neighboring country, which is why they’ve made recent preparations to counteract what they’ve been viewing from China’s further military expansion on Taiwan.
In The Constitution of Japan: Pacifism, Popular Sovereignty, and Fundamental Human Rights, Article Nine states Japan’s vow to take on a passive military role following its defeat in World War II. At first, they had little to no military force to reaffirm that they no longer follow the same militaristic pathways that were committed during the Second World War. Later on, they redeveloped a military following the U.S. and Korean war. It continued developing under the understanding that they would only use it in defense. (AP News).
Japan took preparations on Dec. 26, 2025, with its cabinet approving a military spending budget of over $9 million yen or $58 billion U.S. dollars.