History, the hardest easy problem for Japan to resolve

How China Uses Wartime History Against Japan

By Daniel Sneider, lecturer in East Asian studies at Stanford University, non-resident distinguished fellow at the Korea Economic Institute of America, and APP Member. 

First Published October 7, 2026 on Toyo Keizai Online.

Beyond all the pageantry, the Chinese leader Xi Jinping had a strategic goal for his Washington visit – to undermine the American relationship with Japan. Xi succeeded, perhaps beyond his expectations.

Japanese policy makers saw this coming. They arranged a brief meeting on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly between Prime Minister Takaichi Sanae and Donald Trump ahead of Xi’s arrival.

The meeting was empty of content but seemed reassuring. But the next day, Trump welcomed Xi by fondly recalling “the greatness that we had together fighting in World War Two” without mentioning the postwar alliance with Japan.

Xi followed the next day at the official banquet, making clear who was their common enemy. “Over 80 years ago, the Chinese and American people stood shoulder to shoulder in the fight against Japanese militarist aggressors,” Xi said, deliberately obscuring the fact that wartime China was led by the Nationalists, not their Communist foes. The official statements issued by both governments echoed the language of their status as wartime allies.

“Clearly, Beijing would like to drive a wedge between Trump and Takaichi,” respected scholar Mike Mochizuki told Toyo Keizai, “but Takaichi clings to Donald while Donald does not return the favor by calling her Sanae.”

This Chinese use of the wartime past is part of a broader campaign to increase diplomatic pressure on Japan and the Takaichi administration over the Prime Minister’s remarks on a Taiwan contingency and to push the Chinese characterization of Japan’s defense buildup as a renewal of Japanese wartime “militarism”.

Trump, thrilled by his role as a host to Xi, either ignored the Chinese strategic intent, or simply failed to understand the trap he had stepped into.

“Trump’s failure to grasp that the United States had allied with a different China and fought a different Japan will only invite more Chinese coercion,” commented Mireya Solis, the senior Japan expert at the Brookings Institution think tank in Washington.

The Chinese wedge strategy may not be entirely effective. The U.S.-Japan alliance remains anchored in security establishments whose bonds have “deepened enough to prevent a U.S.-Japan estrangement even under Trump,” notes Mochizuki, affiliated with the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.

But Japanese officials are clearly rattled. The Prime Minister’s office felt compelled to tell the Yomiuri Shimbun that during a short phone call between Takaichi and Trump after the Xi visit, the American president reassured her that he had not sided with the Chinese leader in his criticism of Japan and urged him to hold talks with the Japanese Premier. “I’d be surprised if Trump spoke in detail about Japan with Xi,” a recently retired senior State Department official told this writer.

China’s war on Takaichi

China’s criticism of Japan intensified in response to Takaichi’s victory in the Liberal Democratic Party presidential election last October. Even before her remarks on a possible use of Japanese military forces in a Taiwan crisis, the Chinese were warning about the dangers of her administration as a triumph of the ‘new conservatives’ who favor defense buildup and cultivate close ties to pro-independence forces in Taiwan.

Takaichi’s unapologetic views on the war were well known in Beijing. She made a splash in the Diet early in her career, in 1994, challenging then Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi for his bold statements acknowledging the war as an act of aggression. Later Murayama issued his statement on the 50th anniversary of the war apologizing for Japan’s “colonial rule and aggression.”

For Takaichi, this was unacceptable. “You can’t just apologize on my behalf without my consent,” she said in the Diet exchange, making it clear that she viewed the war as “legally justifiable.” In a later interview, she pledged to revise the Murayama statement, saying that Japan “fought wars for self-preservation and self-defense.”

When Takaichi met Xi on the sidelines of the APEC summit in Korea in late October, shortly after she took power, the Chinese leader pointedly challenged these views.

“We should widely promote the spirit of the Murayama Statement,” he reportedly told her, “which reflected on the history of aggression and apologized to victimized countries.”

In that sense, Takaichi herself has created the opportunity for China to use the wartime past to try to isolate and pressure Japan.

“Takaichi shares (former Prime Minister) Abe’s revisionist views of history but lacks Abe’s pragmatic and prudent judgement,” says Japan scholar Mochizuki. “So it is not surprising that China has linked Taiwan, Japanese imperialism, and Japan’s defense buildup together to criticize what they see as Japan’s neomilitarism.”

The Chinese use of the wartime past continued with the late September visit of former Foreign Minister Iwaya Takeshi. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi linked the moment to the anniversary of the Tokyo war crimes trials.

"If Japan does not learn lessons from history and challenges the postwar 'Peace Constitution,' tries to revive its history of aggression and resurrect war criminals, it will not even be able to face the world, let alone move toward the future, and it will have no future," Wang said.

Behind this war talk, the Wang Yi talks with Iwaya are an effort to reach out to forces within Japan that believe Takaichi’s anti-China stance, and her overreliance on the relationship with the unreliable Trump, are a mistake. Iwaya, along with former Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru, is among those clearly opposed to the Prime Minister’s policies toward China. Even more intriguing is the recent interview in Shincho by special advisor Imai Takaya calling on Takaichi to change her language on Taiwan and take a strategic view that does “not rely on the US for everything.”

The upcoming APEC summit meeting in China may provide a window to repair relations. But it will require Japan to act, a Japan that is increasingly isolated by China.

China’s use of the wartime past is nothing new

However the current maneuvers play out, it is important to recognize that the Chinese use of the wartime past is hardly new. In a comparative study of the formation of wartime historical memory that we conducted at Stanford University, our research detailed how the Chinese Communist Party shifted in the last few decades to construct a patriotic narrative to replace one that focused on the struggle against their Nationalist enemies.

In this patriotic narrative, the war serves a dual purpose. Firstly, it allows the current Chinese leadership to assume the role of a great power that helped found the United Nations and was part of a global “anti-fascist” struggle. And it emphasizes the struggle of a unified Chinese people against the Japanese invader, claiming to have been victors in that war.

“There is a growing sense in China that its suffering and its contribution to the overall victory in World War II haven’t been sufficiently appreciated,” historian Rana Mitter, the author of several important books on the war and Chinese memory, told The Wire China in a 2020 interview. “World War II has enabled the state to say, look, this is when China was able to stand up for itself and fight back against invasion.”

In recent years, “history is used by China, including war history and the history of the United Nations, to make the case for Chinese global leadership since 1945,” Harvard Kennedy School historian Mitter told a recent seminar in Europe. The message is that in the current turbulence of the world order, China can play the role it played in 1945 in creating that order.

Beyond the claim to global leadership, the Chinese have not hesitated to use the wartime memories to target Japan.

Last September, the Chinese hosted a huge commemoration of the 80th anniversary, featuring a military parade attended by Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un. Xi chose this moment to again emphasize the war against Japan and the creation of a “national united front against Japanese aggression established at the initiative of the Communist Party of China.”

Paired with the celebration, the Chinese film industry premiered two slickly produced blockbuster films, both of which were aimed not only at the Chinese audience but also distributed globally, including on streaming services like Netflix. “Dead to Rights” was yet another account of the Nanjing Massacre, done relatively artfully. But “731,” an account of the infamous secretive Japanese biological and chemical warfare unit that performed ghastly experiments on Chinese and foreign prisoners, was directly aimed at Japan. The depiction of Japanese as evil barbarians, and the failure of the United States to prosecute these war crimes, was garishly depicted.

This clash surfaced at the United Nations in what seems like an obscure issue – the existence of a clause in the UN charter which refers to “enemy states,” namely Japan and Germany, allowing the Allied powers from World War II to take action against those former Axis powers without prior Security Council approval. It was designed as a temporary safeguard against the resurgence of militarism but is widely recognized as obsolete and without effect. The General Assembly voted twice to remove the clause but it requires an amendment of the Charter that China and Russia can block.

Prime Minister Takaichi called on the UN to remove this clause. After her address to the General Assembly, China’s deputy ambassador to the UN, Sun Lei, defended its existence, pointing to “proof that Japan’s re-militarization has become a real threat to regional and global peace and stability.”

These history wars are decades long, and they shift in response to the needs of foreign policy, in both Beijing and Tokyo. China has played the history card, again, and it remains to be seen how Japan will respond. For Japan, the U.S. under Trump is increasingly an unreliable actor. But however this plays out, the past will never really be forgotten.

Japan's Diplomacy Overshadowed

Takaichi Obscured by the Trump-Xi Summit

By Takuya Nishimura, Senior Fellow, Asia Policy Point
Former editorial writer for the Hokkaido Shimbun
You can find his blog, J Update here.
September 28, 2026

A week ago, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi hoped to display Japan as the leader of the Asia-Pacific region – backed by the unshaken support of the United States. She outlined her position during a 30-hour visit between September 21 and 23 to the United Nations in New York. She needs to rebuild her diplomacy, which has not been going very well since her comment on the Taiwan contingency last November. However, her effort was overshadowed by Chinese President Xi Jinping’s state visit to the U.S. and his meeting with President Donald Trump at the White House.
 
The official purpose of Takaichi’s trip to the U.S. was to give her first speech at the annual General Debate of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA). In her address, Takaichi emphasized Japan’s commitment to the rule of law. “Since the end of the Second World War, Japan, as a peace-loving nation, has attached great importance to the rule of law in the settlement of any disputes,” she said. In this case, “rule of law” is a veiled reference to the International Criminal Court (ICC).
 
At home, Takaichi has received considerable backlash to her indecisive response to U.S. sanctions on Tomoko Akane, the Japanese president of the ICC. Takaichi needs to reverse the downward trend in the approval rating for her cabinet. By pledging unwavering support for the ICC, Takaichi distanced herself from Trump, who called the ICC “the out of control institution” in his speech to the UNGA.
 
Diplomacy based on democratic values is a crucial element for Takaichi to distinguish Japan from China. She promotes the concept of a “Free and Open” Indo-Pacific (FOIP) that was initiated by her political mentor, former prime minister Shinzo Abe. When Abe proposed this doctrine in 2016, China was extending its power throughout the world under the brand name “One Belt One Road.” The brand covered China’s advance to the South China Sea, which was found unlawful by the Permanent Court of Arbitration in 2016, a month before Abe proposed the FOIP. Abe hoped to use the FOIP to counter China’s territorial aims.
 
Former premier Fumio Kishida revised the FOIP in 2023 to apply it to Russian aggression in Ukraine. Kishida reiterated that Ukraine today would be East Asia tomorrow. Takaichi has now updated the FOIP again to explain Japan’s effort to secure an international supply chain, which was impacted by the effective blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and by China’s weaponization of rare earths exports. Thus, the FOIP is a diplomatic tool for Japan to use to counter China’s growing influence in the world.
 
Takaichi also quoted from the FOIP in her meeting with Trump at the U.N. Headquarters just before her UNGP speech on September 22. “I appreciate Donald’s strong commitment to the Japan-U.S. alliance,” she said at the meeting. Takaichi tried to remind Trump of the fact that Japan should be the closest partner for the U.S. in Asia, hoping to deter Trump from making any excessive concessions on Taiwan in his meeting with Xi two days later.
 
However, rather than fostering the Japan-U.S. relationship, the meeting highlighted differences between Japan and the U.S. Takaichi told Trump that Japan had been and would in the future support the ICC, knowing that Trump was calling on countries to withdraw from it. Trump expressed concern about the depreciation of the Japanese yen. Takaichi did not refer to any discussion of Taiwan in her press conference after the meeting.
 
To her regret, the meeting between Trump and Xi on September 24 and 25 must not have been what Takaichi had hoped it would be. Xi urged Trump to oppose the independence of Taiwan, and Trump did not say how he had responded. Trump also did not say whether the U.S. would resume exporting weapons to Taiwan. “He understands very much how I feel,” Trump said after the meeting.
 
On regulation of artificial intelligence, on which both countries compete, Trump and Xi agreed to establish a body for bilateral dialogue. Both leaders hoped to minimize the difference between them. Fundamentally, however, both leaders were responding to domestic concerns. Trump must show that he can manage the China relationship to attract voters in the mid-term elections in November. For his part, Xi must show at the National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in 2027 that China is a great power equivalent to the U.S. Trump and Xi confirmed that they will have two meetings later this year, at APEC in China and at the G20 in the U.S..
 
Trump’s and Xi’s exchange of their views of World War II history – not necessarily those of trained historians – must have been a nightmare for Takaichi. In the welcoming ceremony, Trump noted the long-running close relationship between both nations – a contentious one that began only 50 years ago – and called them “allies in World War II,” a war that had ended 30 years earlier.” Xi replied at the state dinner that both nations “stood shoulder to shoulder in the fight against Japanese militarist aggressors.” The White House fact sheet on Xi’s visit also explicitly noted the wartime alliance.
 
Takaichi did not respond directly to their characterizations of history, stressing instead the firmness of the Japan-U.S. alliance even after the history of brutal warfare. In her speech to the UNGA Takaichi’s only historical reference was to call for the rescission of the “enemy states clauses” (Article 107 and parts of Articles 53 and 77) from the UN Charter, which apply to the Axis powers defeated in WWII, including Germany, Italy, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, and Finland, as well as Japan.
 
Takaichi and her rightwing supporters hope that time has obscured Japan’s war history of atrocities and criminality. They believe that the Abe administration’s active revision and questioning of historical facts has caused painful memories to fade. Today, they believe, Japan should be only remembered as the war’s loser – devastated by relentless bombing and two atomic bombs.
 
However, Xi took the opportunity to emphasize that China and the U.S. were allies against an invading Japan, creating a bond “forged in blood and fire.” Trump agreed. Japan’s lingering war history and insufficient apologies resonate with Americans as they do with the Chinese. The past year’s identification of American POW remains from the war found in Tokyo, Taiwan, and the Philippines* and the POW’s hometown burials have revived memories of Japanese viciousness.
 
The negotiations between the two major powers -- over Taiwan’s status, the development of AI, and the interpretation of history – presumably will take place, regardless of Japan’s concerns. Takaichi once described her diplomacy as “flourishing on the world’s center stage,” tracking the aim of former premier Abe. The Trump-Xi meeting, however, and whatever its long-term outcome, revealed that Japan is marginalized by practice and history in the U.S.-China power game.

*Remains of American POWs of Japan who died in Takao (Kaohsiung), Taiwan; Subic Bay, the Philippines; Cabanatuan, the Philippines; and Tokyo, Japan who were buried in mass graves as unknowns after the war in the Manila American Cemetery in the Philippines and the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific in Hawaii have been identified recently by the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency. Hundreds of hometown burials with full military honors have taken place across the U.S. reviving memories of the War.

Asia Policy Events, Monday September 28, 2026

TAKEAWAYS FROM THE TRUMP-XI SUMMIT: THE ECONOMIC SECURITY ANGLES. 9/28, 9:00-10:00am (EDT), VIRTUAL. Sponsor: CSIS. Speakers: Scott Kennedy, Senior Adviser and Trustee Chair, Chinese Business and Economics, CSIS; Sujai Shivakumar, Director and Senior Fellow, Renewing American Innovation, CSIS; Philip Luck, Director, Economics Program and Scholl Chair, International Business, CSIS; Kate Koren, Deputy Director, Economics Program and Scholl Chair, International Business, CSIS; Ilaria Mazzocco, Deputy Director and Senior Fellow, Trustee Chair, Chinese Business and Economics, CSIS; Lauryn Williams, Deputy Director and Senior Fellow, Strategic Technologies Program, CSIS.

THE SECOND TRUMP-XI SUMMIT: TAKEAWAYS FROM THE US, CHINA, AND RUSSIA. 9/28, 9:30am (EDT), VIRTUAL. Sponsor: Stimson Center. Speakers: Christopher Preble, Senior Fellow and Director, Reimagining US Grand Strategy Program, Stimson Center; Yun Sun, Senior Fellow and Director, China Program, Stimson Center; Peter Slezkine, Senior Fellow and Director, Russia Program, Stimson Center.

AF BRIG. GEN. TIMOTHY M. HELFRICH. 9/28, 1:00-2:30pm (EDT), VIRTUAL. Sponsor: Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies. Speaker: Brig. Gen. Timothy M. Helfrich, Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Fighters and Advanced Aircraft, Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, Air Force Materiel Command; Moderator: Heather Penney, Director of Studies and Research, Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.

PROTECTING UKRAINE'S ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE, FOCUSING ON WINTER, WAR, AND LESSONS FOR THE UNITED STATES. 9/28, 2:00pm, 188 Russell Senate Office Building. Sponsor: Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe (U.S. Helsinki Commission). Speakers: Meredith Berger, former Assistant Secretary of the Navy (Energy, Installations, and Environment); Michael Kofman, senior fellow, Russia and Eurasia Program, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; Alex Riabchyn, Chief International and Sustainability Officer, Naftogaz Ukraine. 

BOOK TALK: IS CHINA'S ECONOMY BROKEN? 9/28, 4:00-6:00pm (EDT), HYBRID. Sponsor: Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics, CSIS. Speakers: author Logan Wright, Senior Associate (Non-resident), Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics, CSIS, Broken China: How the Economic Miracle Shattered and What It Means for the World; Dinny McMahon, Head of China Markets Research, Trivium China; Tianlei Huang, Senior Fellow, Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE); Zoe Liu, Maurice R. Greenberg Senior Fellow for China Studies, Council on Foreign Relations (CFR); Moderator: Scott Kennedy, Senior Adviser and Trustee Chair in Chinese Business and Economics, CSIS. PURCHASE BOOK

CHINA’S LAW ON PROMOTING ETHNIC UNITY AND PROGRESS. 9/28, 4:30-6:00pm (EDT), IN PERSON ONLY. Sponsor: Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University. Speakers: Aaron Glasserman, Distinguished Fellow, Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University; Tenzin (Tendor) Dorjee, Director of Research & Advocacy, Tibet Action Institute; Rayhan Asat, Senior Legal and Policy Advisor, Atlantic Council; Moderator: Andrew J. Nathan, Class of 1919 Professor of Political Science, Columbia University.

JAPAN’S RESIDENCY RULES: WHAT HAS REALLY CHANGED AND HOW DO THEY COMPARE WITH OTHER PLACES? 9/28, 6:00-9:00pm (JST), IN PERSON ONLY. Sponsors: Yokosuka Council on Asia-Pacific Studies (YCAPS); Japan Expert Insights. Speakers: Yuta Kato, Certified Administrative Procedures Legal Specialist (Immigration Attorney), IMS Legal Professional Corporation; Maximilien Xavier Rehm, Postdoctoral Assistant, Graduate School of Global Studies, Doshisha University, Kyoto; Ben Tanaka, Founder, RetireJapan; Moderator: John Bradford, Executive Director, YCAPS.

South Korea's Autonomous Defense

South Korea Is Building for the Alliance and for Itself 

By Daniel Sneider, lecturer in East Asian studies at Stanford University, non-resident distinguished fellow at the Korea Economic Institute of America, and APP Member. 

First Published July 20, 2026 on the blog of the Korea Economic Institute of America.

The United States and South Korea describe the latter’s defense buildup with the same enthusiasm but mean two different things. American officials call it “alliance modernization,” while South Korean officials increasingly call it “autonomous defense.” Neither side has much incentive to dwell on the difference, but it is getting harder to avoid.

As the Donald Trump administration tells it, South Korea is increasing defense spending and equipment procurement within the context of a redesigned U.S. strategy to restructure the roles of both U.S. and South Korean forces on the Korean Peninsula and beyond.

Modernization is the “administration’s shorthand for pushing U.S. allies to adapt to a changing regional security environment and shoulder more of the defense burden,” Brookings Institution’s Andrew Yeo observed last fall. Writing for the latest edition of KEI’s Korea Policy, Korea National Defense University’s In Hyo Seol described modernization as “a redistribution of roles on a foundation of converging military interests.” 

This framework is a more comfortable one for those concerned about friction between the United States and South Korea. Differences over specific issues, such as the timeline for returning wartime operational control (OPCON) of South Korean armed forces, can be more easily managed if both Washington and Seoul share the same goal of alliance modernization.

Autonomous Defense

But the reality is more complicated. South Koreans increasingly place their defense buildup and its key components within a different, though not entirely contradictory, policy framework called “autonomous defense.”

Autonomous defense traces its roots to the fear of abandonment in the 1970s, when then President Richard Nixon withdrew 20,000 troops from the peninsula during the Vietnam War. More recently, defense autonomy for South Korea means greater self-reliance, indigenous weapons procurement sustained by arms exports, and ultimately limiting the reliance on U.S. forces as a deterrent to North Korea. 

South Korean policymakers have long grappled with a persistent tension in defense policy between a desire for more autonomy and the reality of the operational indispensability of the U.S.-South Korea alliance. “The goal of autonomy policy is to hold our own while being alliance compatible,” a senior South Korean official told the author on a recent visit to Seoul. In other words, South Korea hopes to shift the alliance’s internal balance of power, reduce technological dependency on U.S. defense systems, and build sufficient indigenous capability to make Seoul a more equal partner.

On the surface, the Trump administration’s goals of shifting a greater share of defense burdens to its allies and encouraging a more regional approach to security would seem to be compatible with South Korea’s preferences. But Washington has been clear about the limits: allies are expected to spend more, not to build alternatives.

The OPCON transfer initiative, for example, was initially targeted in 2012 but has since been replaced by a conditions-based threshold with no fixed timeline. The conditions range from South Korea’s own capability, both in equipment and command, to lead combined forces, its strike and air defense capabilities, and most nebulous of all, the existence of a regional security environment that would be compatible with the transfer.

In 2019, the allies determined that South Korea met a minimum baseline capability and interoperability with U.S. Forces Korea (USFK). Further progress slowed until recently, when the Trump and Lee Jae Myung administrations agreed that a second stage, full operational capability, would be verified this year. Seoul seems likely to establish 2028 as a new target year for OPCON transfer to occur by. 

That push has been met, however, with resistance from the U.S. military, led by USFK Commander Xavier Brunson, who suggested earlier this year that this timeline was too optimistic. The U.S. Senate has backed that up by proposing tighter conditions for OPCON transfer. 

Arms Production and Exports

Similar tensions lurk not far below the surface when it comes to South Korea’s indigenous arms production and its successful export drive across Europe and Asia. Sales of armored vehicles, artillery, jet aircraft, and missile defense systems have transformed the country into a global leader of arms sales. Earlier this month, President Lee attended a NATO forum and suggested such weapons sales could underpin an evolution of South Korea-NATO ties. But senior Trump administration officials have seemingly pushed back on the notion that allies could or should replace reliance on American weapons.

“The simple fact of the matter is that no alternative country or countries can compete with the U.S. defense industrial base, either in quantity or quality,” Pentagon policy chief Elbridge Colby asserted on social media last week. The United States “makes the best equipment, and we make it at a scale that no plausible competitor can match,” Colby continued. Access to the U.S. defense industrial base “is a privilege, not a right.”

Thus, even in its most ambitious formulation, South Korea’s autonomous defense still involves maintaining the U.S. extended deterrence commitment in the face of threats from North Korea. Some sort of U.S. military presence makes that political commitment concrete.

“The withdrawal of USFK is not something we want to see,” a senior Lee administration official told this writer. “But if it becomes a reality for us, and we have to fend for ourselves, we need to block the threat of nuclear weapons.”

The most obvious way to do so—and the one that has attracted the most attention in American policy circles—is a South Korean nuclear weapons program. Alternatively, policymakers in Seoul are interrogating whether rapid changes in defense technology might create a reliable form of conventional deterrence. The first option is still beyond the pale, while the second is still a ways down the road.

“We are learning the lessons of the Ukraine and Iran wars,” the senior official explained, notably laser weapons and AI-powered defense systems that can “potentially intercept hundreds of missiles at one time.” 

For now, neither the United States nor South Korea has an interest in forcing the question. But indigenous production, export markets, command authority, and the first sketches of a conventional answer to nuclear coercion add up to more than burden-sharing.

Japan and South Korea Grow Closer

The Trump effect on Japan–South Korea relations

By Daniel Sneider, lecturer in East Asian studies at Stanford University, non-resident distinguished fellow at the Korea Economic Institute of America, and APP Member. 

First Published July 12, 2026 at the East Asian Forum.

The August 2023 Japan–South Korea–US trilateral summit at Camp David provided powerful impetus for Tokyo and Seoul to restore warm ties, an undertaking initiated by former South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol.

The momentum in Japan–South Korea relations has continued, surviving changes in leadership in all three countries. Even the potentially disastrous pairing of a conservative nationalist government in Tokyo and a progressive administration in Seoul has not slowed the pace of the bilateral partnership’s deepening.

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi and South Korean President Lee Jae-myung sit at two ends of the political spectrum, but their May 2026 meeting in Lee’s hometown of Andong on 18-19 May, was marked by a spirit of warmth. Even Lee’s critics, who feared that his long-held harsh views on the legacy of Japanese colonial rule would reverse progress, were pleased.

Former Korean Ambassador to Japan Shin Kak-soo was ‘quite impressed with how [Lee] handled South Korea–Japan relations after taking office’, noting that the meeting in Andong ‘went very well’ — a view shared by senior South Korean officials in off-the-record discussions.

This success can be credited to Japan and Korea’s shared challenges of hedging against both China and an unpredictable United States, with US President Donald Trump’s trade wars and military interventions sending shocks across both economies. Lee’s decision to avoid past sources of contention like wartime history issues with Japan can be read as a calculated effort to use closer ties with Tokyo to insulate South Korea from growing chaos in an unpredictable security environment.

The most powerful factor in this is the prospect of US withdrawal from global leadership under Trump 2.0. Another South Korean senior official noted off the record that South Korea and Japan have ‘shared anxieties about Washington’ and that ‘it is not about China’.

Senior South Korean officials are discussing the need for closer security ties with Japan in response to US retreat, including potentially finessing the territorial disputes by signing a non-aggression pact and moving towards a mutual defence treaty. While this would go beyond what most South Koreans would tolerate — and much less in Japan — its mere consideration is a remarkable sign of the impact of Trump-driven uncertainty.

This tightening is taking place without active US involvement at the highest level. While trilateral meetings are still being held among senior officials and statements are being issued with common views on regional and global security issues like North Korea, this is the product of institutional inertia created by former US president Joe Biden’s administration. There is no evidence of a connection between those official pronouncements and the White House and Trump has never expressed any interest in trilateral cooperation, nor is he eager to follow in Biden’s footsteps.

Despite the factors impelling closer ties, there are serious concerns in Seoul and Tokyo that the rhetoric of bilateral partnership has not been sufficiently reflected in concrete actions.

The most cited example of this is the potential admittance of South Korea to the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership, a move which could forge closer trade and investment alliances and counter US mercantilism. While Seoul has expressed its interest in joining, it has yet to formally apply. Domestic politics remain a constraint, reflected in the ongoing restrictions on the purchase of Japanese seafood due to the Fukushima nuclear accident and its aftermath.

A similar dynamic is visible in the arena of defence cooperation. Japanese Defence Minister Koizumi Shinjiro visited Seoul in June 2026 and reaffirmed tightening defence ties and trilateral cooperation with the United States. But he was unable to get Seoul to sign off on a long-sought military logistics pact which would institutionalise joint operations. Lee told reporters earlier in June that public sentiment on history issues were the obstacle to signing what would otherwise be a logical agreement.

Beyond immediate issues, two policy areas — China and North Korea — could also drive the neighbours apart.

Lee has been careful to maintain good ties with Beijing, both in the economic realm and in potentially seeking China’s help in dealing with North Korea. The divergence between Lee’s policy towards China and the hostile state of Japan–China relations was noted at the Andong meeting.

Both governments share a commitment to the eventual denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula. But Lee seems ready to back a possible Trump summit with North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un which could offer de facto acceptance of North Korea’s nuclear status. Japan has always been fearful that this outcome could lead to a separation of the Korean peninsula from US extended deterrence commitments and leave Japan exposed to Pyongyang’s nuclear threat.

The relationship also remains marred by the lingering issues of wartime history and justice that have been carefully put aside but not resolved. Compensation cases against Japanese companies for wartime workers in Japanese mines and factories continue to make their way through South Korean courts. Takaichi has carefully avoided doing anything to inflame Seoul, but it would only take a visit to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine — something she did regularly for several decades — to relight the fires of South Korean patriotism.

For now, the path to improved ties looks open, thanks in large part to Trump and to a lesser extent to Chinese President Xi Jinping. But the question of how long it will remain so is far less certain.

APP'S BOOKS OF THE WEEK of June 28, 2026

 📚Books of the Week📖

Red Arrow Across the Pacific: 

The Thirty-Second Infantry Division during World War II

By Mark D. Van Ells, Professor of History, Queensborough Community College of the City University of New York

PURCHASE BOOK 11/12/2024

The story of the renowned Thirty-Second "Red Arrow" Infantry Division: qNational Guard unit—which originated in Wisconsin and Michigan but soon evolved to include soldiers from California to New England—became one of the first US military units deployed overseas in World War II, eventually logging more combat hours than any other US Army division. Offers a cultural history of the Red Arrow's wartime experience, from its mobilization in 1940, to its deployment across New Guinea, Australia, and the Philippines, to its postwar occupation of Japan. Drawing from letters, memoirs, and interviews, Van Ells lets the soldiers speak for themselves, describing in their own words the terror of combat, their impressions of foreign lands, the struggle to maintain their own humanity, and the many ways the war profoundly changed them.

1942: Crux of War

By Jonathan Parshall, Lecturer, 

US Naval War College

PURCHASE BOOK 6/18/2026

By the end of 1942 there had been a sea-change in the conduct of WWII. Within just one 40-day timespan, the British had triumphed over Rommel at Alamein; British and American forces landed in North Africa to confront the Axis position there; the Americans won two naval battles at Guadalcanal, sealing the fate of that campaign and with it Japanese expansionism; the Red Army launched a massive counter-offensive at Stalingrad that would condemn six Axis armies-and hundreds of thousands of German, Italian, Romanian and Hungarian soldiers-to eventual destruction. The Allies had somehow gained the upper hand, forcing the Axis powers into a defensive crouch from which they would not rebound. The war, in short, had turned.

Surviving Chaos: Geopolitics When the Rules Fail

By Mark Leonard, Co-founder and Director,

European Council on Foreign Relations

PURCHASE BOOK 6/23/2026

Trump is blowing up political order. Xi Jinping is scrambling the economy. And Putin is redrawing the map of Europe. At a time when every crisis bleeds into the next – from pandemics and wars to climate shocks and AI revolutions – the old rules of global order are collapsing. Leonard reveals how geopolitics is being rewritten in an age of 'Un-Order', where no one agrees on the rules, and even the concept of order itself is up for debate. Drawing on years of conversations with leaders and thinkers from Beijing to Washington, Leonard argues that we are witnessing a new divide in international politics.

*Books purchased through the links here support Asia Policy Point*

Books selected on the APP website are not a sign of endorsement. 

They are simply new and interesting.

Takaichi's Mercantilism

Japan's PM Takaichi Heads to Europe

By Takuya Nishimura, Senior Fellow, Asia Policy Point
Former editorial writer for the Hokkaido Shimbun
You can find his blog, J Update here.
June 15, 2026

Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi participates in her first Group of Seven (G7) summit in Evian, France from June 15 to 17. The meeting is the last stop for her; in the past few days, she has visited the United Kingdom and Italy. Her top diplomatic priority is securing Japan’s supply chain amid a volatile world order. Although Takaichi says she stands for a “diplomacy that flourishes on the world’s center stage,” her diplomacy is in fact heavily dominated by her own interests.
 
The first stop on her trip to Europe was London from June 13-14. In a meeting with United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Takaichi shared her concern over export restrictions on critical minerals and urged bilateral cooperation on economic security, including strengthening supply chains.
 
Securing supply chains has been a core tenet of Takaichi’s diplomacy. In her individual meetings with the leaders of Vietnam, Australia, the Republic of Korea, and the Philippines in May, Takaichi drew attention to the maintenance of supply chains while criticizing China for its export controls over critical minerals. Aspiring to strengthen her position on international economic security, Takaichi hoped to make up for her irregular comment on the Taiwan contingency last November, which deeply undermined Japan’s relations with China.
 
Takaichi and Starmer also confirmed acceleration of the development of next-generation fighter aircraft under the Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) with the UK and Italy. This is supposedly the main reason that Takaichi chose to visit London and Rome before the G7 summit.
 
Takaichi has sought to expand Japan’s international trade in defense equipment, expecting it to contribute to her economic growth strategy. She promoted trade in or joint development of destroyers with the Philippines and Australia. GCAP is in the same context. She once said that “Strategic investments that enhance resilience against potential crises are the core focus of the Takaichi Cabinet’s growth strategy.”
 
This approach reverses Japan’s longstanding reluctance to trade in military equipment.  “Even if some foreign exchange surplus could be earned, our nation has not stooped so low as to make money by exporting weapons,” former prime minister Kiichi Miyazawa said when he was foreign minister in 1976. Takaichi now argues that times have changed and that trade with other countries in defense equipment would contribute to the growth of the Japanese economy.
 
While Takaichi was travelling in Europe, U.S. President Donald Trump announced that the U.S. and Iran had reached a deal for ending the war. Takaichi posted on X that she would welcome the agreement as a key step toward a settlement and hoped for free and safe traffic in the Strait of Hormuz. Takaichi must be wishing for the normalization of international trade. “Donald is the only person who can bring peace and prosperity across the world,” Takaichi said to Trump in her visit to the White House in March.
 
The Takaichi administration introduced a subsidy for gasoline as soon as the war in Iran started. To maintain public support for her cabinet, she formulated a supplemental budget to continue this subsidy earlier this month. A subsidy does not cure all ills, however. Opposition lawmakers have questioned Takaichi about oil import shortages that limit production of various goods that are indispensable for manufacturing and that cause prolonged price inflation.
 
That is why she is focusing her diplomatic efforts on securing the supply chain. It is expected that she would propose a joint stockpiling plan for critical minerals at the G7 summit meeting. Takaichi hopes to take the initiative to build a system in which like-minded countries can collaborate to strengthen supply chains. Her proposal would be a countermeasure to China’s coercive trade policy on critical minerals.
 
It is still unclear whether Takaichi’s initiative to secure the supply chain accelerates Plan B of Japan’s diplomacy, which is to move Japan away from excessive dependence upon the United States. It is true that Japan has been seeking alternatives in trade opportunities after Trump imposed additional tariffs in June 2025. The Iran war has proven that Japan cannot secure oil from the Middle East by relying on U.S. dominance in international security. Yet Japan’s national security is still fundamentally based its alliance with the U.S., as seen in efforts to grow the defense budget by current and former administrations.
 
Takaichi has yet to find an exit from Japan’s current diplomatic difficulties: the uncertainty of the Trump administration and the persistent diplomatic pressure from China. Although Takaichi stands by the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP), which was invented by former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to expand Japan’s role in the region, it no longer holds much sway. In the current war-based world order, the creation of a democratic bloc of countries may not guarantee stability or prosperity. The FOIP policy may appeal to Japan’s conservative base, but Takaichi does not have a viable grand strategy to give Japan a greater role on the international stage.
 
Turning our eyes to domestic politics, Takaichi faces scandals of her own. Her secretary is thought to be involved in a defamatory social media campaign strategy in the presidential election of the Liberal Democratic Party last October. Although she has denied any misdeeds in her campaign, the opposition parties have demanded that the secretary testify before a Diet committee. Although it may not violate any law, a defamatory strategy could damage Takaichi politically because she depends on support from SNS users.

Her approval rating has suffered a gradual decline according to polls of news organizations because of the defamation scandal or the shortage of naphtha. As former prime ministers have done, Takaichi hopes to achieve diplomatic gains that will change the direction of domestic headwinds. However, it is unlikely that she can attain success in her visit to Europe to a degree that would lead to a resurgence in public support.