Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio’s state visit to the United States – highlighted by his meeting with U.S. President Joe Biden on April 10 – crystallizes the fundamental tenets of the Japanese post-war security architecture, while also affirming the new reorientations of the U.S. strategy for the Indo-Pacific.
This comes at a time of significant political realignment in Japan, as the different party ideologies coalescing in the delicate equilibrium over Japanese pacifism have shifted in recent years. The main opposition, the Constitutional Democratic Party, has remained vocal in its vigilance toward expansions of Japanese defense ambitions. Last month, after the Kishida government announced a change to arms export regulations to allow the sale of next-generation fighter jets abroad, CDP legislators raised questions in parliament about the inevitability of Japanese combat…
