Japan prepares for a contested era

In Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai, a farming village worn down by bandits who return every harvest does what weak actors have always done. It hires protection, paying in rice because rice is all it has. The samurai take the job, but on one condition. The farmers must learn to fight. They sharpen bamboo spears, build a palisade, flood the approaches and give up the outlying houses that cannot be held. The bandits are beaten, and Kambei’s verdict at the end is that the farmers won, not the samurai.

Tokyo would recognise the plot. When Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi releases the revised National Security Strategy and National Defense Strategy at the close of 2026, the documents will describe a country that still wants its protector in the village but no longer assumes the price of rice will stay fixed. It has decided to pick up the spear itself.

The reasons are not abstract. Defence Minister Shinjiro Koizumi calls the environment the most severe since 1945. China’s carriers operate beyond the second island chain, coast guard vessels sit off the Senkakus daily, and a PLA aircraft violated Japanese airspace in August 2024. North Korea has fielded solid-fuel Hwasong-19 and Hwasong-20 ICBMs capable of reaching American cities. Russia, written off as a secondary concern in 2022, signed a mutual defence treaty with Pyongyang in June 2024, received North Korean troops for the Kursk front, and flies joint bomber patrols with China around the archipelago. What Japanese planners once treated as three separate problems increasingly behaves like one.

The June 2026 Research Institute for Peace and Security (RIPS) policy recommendations capture how Tokyo reads this. RIPS President Hideshi Tokuchi describes “a new era of total war” in which peacetime and wartime have blurred. Matake Kamiya of the National Defece Academy insists that “defending the order” remains a strategic goal alongside “defending the nation.” A world in which borders change by force is a world in which Japan's periphery is up for negotiation.

Then there is the samurai. Former National Security Adviser Masataka Okano concludes that American generosity can no longer be taken for granted. Under Secretary of War Elbridge Colby’s September update to the 2026 US National Defence Strategy makes burden-sharing the organising principle. Pyongyang’s ability to hold Los Angeles at risk sharpens an older fear, that Washington might hesitate to trade an American city for a Japanese one. Tomoyuki Ohno of RIPS describes a deepening “alliance dilemma,” while Masahiro Matsumura of Momoyama Gakuin University urges “strategic autonomy” as a Plan B. The samurai are still in the village. They are counting the rice.

Japan’s problem is that it has less rice than it once did. The economy slipped to fourth in the world in 2024. Births fell below 700,000. A weak yen eats into the purchasing power of every defence budget, and the Self-Defence Forces met only about half of their recruitment target in recent years. Masanori Takeda, RIPS executive director, points out that Japan’s reserves amount to just 0.04 percent of the population. A country in this position cannot match China ship for ship. It has to make the geography do the work.

That is what the internal balancing in the new documents is about. The FY2026 defence budget crossed 9 trillion yen and funds the SHIELD littoral network, hypersonic glide vehicles, Tomahawks and a new Air and Space Self-Defence Force. Former fleet commander Yoji Koda urges planners to pair island defence with “chokepoint control,” turning the Ryukyus into the palisade Kurosawa’s farmers built. The April 2026 abolition of lethal export restrictions opened the arms industry. Takahiro Tsuchiya of Kyoto University of Foreign Studies wants the strategy moved “from wartime concepts to peacetime implementation,” targeting supply chains and infrastructure protection.

Spears alone do not win. The village needs neighbors. Tokuchi calls the Japan-Australia, Japan-UK and Japan-ROK relationships “quasi-alliances” requiring institutionalised coordination. Atsuko Higashino of the University of Tsukuba argues Europe must move to a “strategic foundation,” citing Japan’s NATO contributions and the Global Combat Air Programme. Hudson Institute’s Satoru Nagao wants India prioritised because a strong India forces Beijing to divide its forces. Ippeita Nishida of the Sasakawa Peace Foundation proposes a Cabinet-level council to seamlessly manage Official Security Assistance and equipment transfers.

The village also needs to see the bandits coming. Takaichi recently announced a National Intelligence Council and the elevation of the Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office into a National Intelligence Bureau. Emi Mifune of Komazawa University adds that officials need training against cognitive warfare so isolated incidents cannot be amplified by Chinese and Russian influence campaigns. Yet, Tokyo is not burning bridges. Ayumi Togashi of Keio University stresses trust-building with Seoul, while former ambassador Akio Kawato warns against openly framing strategy as containment. Takaichi’s CFIUS-style investment screening reflects an effort to manage interdependence rather than sever it.

In my contribution to the RIPS report, I called this hardened engagement. The illusion of perpetual peace has gone. Japan should pursue deterrence by denial in the Southwest Islands, minilateral cognitive defence with Seoul, Taipei and Canberra, and asymmetric advantage through drone cooperation with battle-tested partners such as Ukraine.

The alliance stays. What changes is Japan’s share of the fight within it. Masatoshi Murakami of Kogakkan University argues the revised strategy should assume Japan is a major power. The label matters less than the lesson of Kurosawa’s village. The farmers won because they stopped outsourcing their survival. The documents due in December will show whether Japan has learned the same thing.

Stephen Nagy is Professor of Politics and International Studies at the International Christian University and a visiting fellow and the Japan Institute for International Affairs specialising in Indo-Pacific geopolitics and great power competition. 

Image: “Japan Ground Self-Defense Force.” by MIKI Yoshihito, CC BY 2.0