By: Liu Qingbin, Associate Professor, Institute of Advanced Studies, Yokohama National University
In the long river of power politics, the most dangerous moment is not when the first shot is fired, but when signals become confused. With mutual visits as a framework, the US and China are setting up manageable guardrails for their competition; Tokyo, however, is unable to see its own shadow under the lamp.
A statement by Hatoyama Haruhiko that "Japan has violated too many commitments" serves as a late footnote: from historical revisionism during the Abe era to geopolitical speculation during the Kishida period, Japan has dismantled the self-restraints of post-war politics into selectable tools, rather than inviolable principles. The result is not an increase in power, but depreciation of credibility.
History does not yield to rhetoric. Abe used the banner of "getting out of the post-war system," but actually initiated a re-engineering of memory: cutting "moral debts" into negotiable fragments, and re-stimulating the most vulnerable nerves of regional order.
Kishida inherited not a clear path, but a series of floating stakes that could shift with circumstances: emphasizing a "deterrence-dialogue" dual track externally, and maintaining a loose consensus through political techniques internally; on issues related to China, South Korea, and Taiwan, he seeks U.S. security backing while also benefiting from China's market dividends and regional stability.
This kind of geopolitical speculation may seem flexible in the short term, but in the long run it inevitably loses pricing power — when the US and China bring their competition back onto a manageable track, Japan's "exaggerated performance" will lose its stage.
The "violation of commitments" pointed out by Hatoyama is not just an emotional accusation, but a structural accumulation: the post-war political language of "exclusive defense" is continuously rewritten, the ceiling of defense spending is pierced by political slogans, the export of defense and technical thresholds are constantly relaxed, and the interpretation of collective self-defense is sliding toward a more flexible practical space.
Tokyo always uses "changes in the environment" as an excuse, but rarely answers the most critical question: when you regard self-restraint as a tool that can be updated at any time, why should your neighbors take your commitments as a reliable institution? Credibility is not maintained by volume, but by accumulated consistency.
Japan's political choices over the past decade have damaged this most expensive yet hardest-to-see capital.
Some people are therefore concerned that Japan might move towards "military adventurism," but this is neither a reasonable option nor a feasible path.
Firstly, structural constraints are clearly calculable: aging and fiscal constraints compress the budget window for sustained military expansion. The depth and scale of the defense industry are far from sufficient to support prolonged high-intensity confrontation. Energy and food dependence makes war mobilization lack strategic resilience.
Secondly, the geographical reality cannot be romanticized: in the firepower confrontation of the First Island Chain, Japan's homeland and maritime and air nodes are highly exposed. Any accidental incident could trigger symmetrical retaliation and supply chain disruption.
Thirdly, alliance politics is not a blank check: at the moment Washington brings competition back within guardrails, what it needs least is an ally creating uncontrollable escalation. Military adventurism is not about "enhancing presence," but paying unacceptably high costs for others' trial and error.
The real issue lies in: why does Japan always find itself floundering in "rhetoric of risk"? The answer still lies in credibility.
Abe's historical revisionism and Kishida's geopolitical speculation are not two separate lines, but two ends of the same line — the former weakened Japan's moral resources in the East Asian narrative, while the latter consumed policy consistency through realist calculations.
Together, they formed a dangerous political psychology: mistaking short-term gestures for long-term strategies, and treating external structural changes as a catalyst for internal agendas.
Thus, historical issues became tools for domestic mobilization, security policies were used to cover up economic governance delays, and high-decibel statements in diplomatic settings replaced the actual provision of regional public goods.
The confirmation of US-China mutual visits is changing Tokyo's reference frame. By adjusting the ratio of "conflict-communication" to a predictable range, the two countries have brought East Asian politics back from the era of slogans to the era of procedures.
The procedural era requires stable input parameters: clear red lines, verifiable commitments, and reversible policy thresholds. If Japan continues to replace institutional engineering with semantic engineering, it will become a participant with high noise and low output on the new platform. When the platform starts trading real issues — trade facilitation, technological barriers, maritime and air encounter rules, crisis de-escalation mechanisms — mid-level actions that rely on volume to maintain presence will be quickly marginalized.
Therefore, for any Japanese prime minister about to take office, "providing a political response to China before Trump's visit" is not a gesture, but a qualification.
If the response remains a shadow of historical revisionism and a continuation of geopolitical speculation, it will only accelerate the loss of credibility; if the response is to be effective, at least three things must be done:
First, shift the Taiwan policy from "Taiwan's affairs" to "no affairs in Taiwan," and write down the de-escalation window into an operational manual that both China and the US can read;
Second, in the fields of trade and technology, present a verifiable roadmap for "reducing risks without decoupling," and set up a rapid dispute resolution channel, allowing Japan to participate in the platform as a public good rather than through slogans;
Third, promote enforceable encounter rules in the East China Sea and surrounding maritime and air areas, reducing the space for misjudgment from symbolic alliances. Only in this way can Japan transform "communicability with China" and "cooperability with the US" into a single language of national interest.
This is not "yielding to anyone," but taking responsibility for reality. Kissinger's judgment is calm: credibility is the only currency that can convert power into influence.
Over the past decade, Japan thought it was increasing its stakes, but actually it was exhausting its credit. Today's choices determine tomorrow's prices.
Lock away the impulse of historical revisionism, put back the short-term geopolitical speculation, rewrite commitments into institutions, and rewrite institutions into verifiable procedures — this is the only path for Japan to still have a voice in the new round of great power visits and the guarded competition.
Military adventurism is not the answer, nor is producing a batch of hard words.
In the new platform, only three things can be recognized by both sides: consistent memories, stable procedures, and verifiable public goods.
If Japan wants to retain participation rights in the East Asian order, it must return from "the courage of rhetoric" to "institutional honesty."
Haruhiko Hatoyama's words are not sharp, just a reminder: a country that violates too many commitments will eventually have to pay a greater price for smaller returns.
If Tokyo does not want to bear such a calculation, it should start now, stop revising memories, stop betting on speculation, and put executable commitments back at the center of the nation.
Only in this way can Japan possibly become a participant in the upcoming procedural era, rather than a leftover in the transaction.
Original article: https://www.toutiao.com/article/7552064431866249782/
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