How Japan is Preparing for War With China
RealLifeLore
0:00 Tensions between Japan and China have recently ratcheted up to the highest
0:03 level they've been since the end of the Second World War.
0:06 The current crisis between them began on the 7th of November 2025,
0:10 when Japan's new Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi,
0:13 was asked point-blank in the Japanese Diet what might
0:16 prompt Japan to exercise the policy of collective self-defense.
0:20 Now, it's important for you to understand
0:22 the context behind this particular phrase in Japanese politics.
0:26 Japan's constitution,
0:27 drafted after the end of the Second World War under Article Nine,
0:30 explicitly reads that the Japanese people
0:33 forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use
0:37 of force as means of settling international disputes.
0:40 It has been under this constitution
0:42 after the horrors Japan experienced during World
0:44 War II that the country has remained a strictly pacifist nation for decades now,
0:49 and why modern Japan's armed forces have never
0:51 been referred to as an army or a navy, but as self-defense forces instead,
0:56 whose mission has always been restricted to the defense of Japanese territory
1:00 itself in the event that Japan comes under hostile foreign attack first.
1:04 But in 2015, spearheaded by then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe,
1:08 the Japanese government significantly reinterpreted Article
1:11 Nine of its constitution with a new security law that enables the self-defense
1:14 forces to exercise collective self-defense as well.
1:18 In essence, granting Japan the legal authority to deploy military
1:21 force abroad if it is in the defense of an ally
1:24 that has come under attack and if it is
1:26 judged to be necessary for the Japanese state's own survival.
1:30 So, fast forward back to the 7th of November in 2025,
1:33 when Japan's new Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi,
1:36 was asked directly by the Diet what scenario exactly might
1:40 prompt Japan to actually invoke the policy of collective self-defense.
1:45 Her public answer was that if China
1:46 initiated an armed blockade or invasion of Taiwan,
1:49 it could constitute a survival-threatening situation for Japan.
1:53 With survival-threatening situation being
1:55 the all-important phrase she used here,
1:58 because it implied that she would trigger Japan's right
2:00 to collective self-defense in the event of a Taiwan
2:03 invasion or blockade scenario that would see
2:05 the self-defense forces deployed into the war against China,
2:08 even if Japanese territory itself was not attacked directly first.
2:13 It was truly a breathtaking and unprecedented statement in Japanese politics.
2:18 The first time ever that [music]
2:19 a sitting Japanese Prime Minister suggested publicly during
2:22 a formal session in Parliament that Japan might
2:25 intervene militarily against China during a Taiwan conflict.
2:30 And China's response since then has been a mix of shock and utter fury.
2:35 The very next day after Takaichi's remarks,
2:37 China's Consul General in Osaka responded with particular anger.
2:41 Writing on X, directly addressed to the Prime Minister herself, quote,
2:46 "If you stick that filthy neck where it doesn't belong,
2:49 it's going to get sliced off.
2:50 Are you ready for that?" End quote.
2:53 The post has since been deleted,
2:55 but further diplomatic attacks from Beijing have followed.
2:58 The Chinese have consistently demanded that Takaichi retract her statement,
3:02 which she has consistently refused to do.
3:04 China provocatively flew a drone between Taiwan
3:07 and the southernmost Japanese island of Yonaguni, that resulted in the Japan Air
3:11 Self-Defense Forces scrambling fighter [music] jets.
3:14 And then even more provocatively, they sent four Chinese Coast Guard vessels
3:17 into the territorial waters around the disputed Senkaku Islands,
3:21 a small group of uninhabited islands administered by Japan but claimed by China.
3:26 Beijing has also issued advisories warning against Chinese students
3:29 from studying in Japan or tourists from visiting Japan,
3:32 which the Japanese government has estimated might end up causing
3:35 more than $14 billion worth of economic damage to Japan alone.
3:40 China has also banned the importation of all seafood coming from Japan,
3:44 and they've recently begun shutting down and blocking Japanese
3:46 firms and other culture from the country as well.
3:49 As most embodied by a viral event that took
3:51 place on the 29th of November, when Maki Otsuki,
3:55 a Japanese singer who was performing her well-known theme
3:57 song for the anime One Piece on stage in Shanghai,
4:01 was forced off of the stage by Chinese officials in the middle
4:04 of her performance after the ban on Japanese
4:07 cultural content came more strictly into force.
4:10 And all the while, Takaichi has continually refused
4:13 to apologize or amend her statements in any way.
4:16 And not only is Japan busy reinterpreting what kinds of military
4:20 engagements they can get involved in from a legal perspective,
4:23 they're also busy backing their words up with enormous new amounts
4:26 of funding and arms for the Japanese Self-Defense Forces as well.
4:30 Frightened by Russia's invasion of Ukraine
4:32 and China's increasing hostility towards Taiwan,
4:35 Japan announced back in 2022 that they would be doubling their annual military
4:39 spending from 1% of GDP to 2% of GDP by no later than 2027,
4:45 equaling NATO military spending targets for the first time in Japan's history.
4:50 Shortly after she became Prime Minister in late 2025,
4:53 Sanae Takaichi announced that the timeline would be sped up by a year
4:56 early to reach 2% of GDP on military spending by 2026,
5:01 meaning the next year Japan will probably achieve
5:03 a defense budget of [music] around $80 billion a year,
5:07 putting it into the same ballpark as the UK
5:09 and near the top five highest military spenders on the planet.
5:13 A truly titanic shift for a country that even just five years ago
5:17 was so well known for its commitment to pacifism that not a single
5:22 soldier in the Self-Defense Forces has ever been killed in action by an enemy
5:26 in the entire history of Japan since the end of World War II.
5:30 But this shift in Japan's military posture has
5:33 been a long time coming, and to China,
5:35 Japan's rapidly increasing military spending and its
5:38 comments about intervening against them over
5:40 Taiwan are triggering deep and painful
5:43 historical memories and experiences from their past.
5:47 Because Japan and China have a long, complicated, and contentious history.
5:52 As the two most preeminent powers in East Asia,
5:54 they maintained relations with one another for thousands of years.
5:58 But in the late 19th century,
6:00 Japan was able to rapidly industrialize
6:02 and remain politically united and centralized,
6:05 which enabled it to take advantage of a historically weak and vulnerable
6:09 China that was still pre-industrial
6:11 and increasingly politically fragmented and decentralized.
6:15 Japan, more than any other single nation,
6:17 contributed the most to China's so-called century of humiliation.
6:22 And they inflicted more than 50 years of continuous pain and suffering on them.
6:27 It began with the First Sino-Japanese War between 1894 and 1895,
6:31 [music] in which Japan attacked China and emerged decisively victorious,
6:36 removing Korea from the Chinese sphere of influence
6:39 and forcing the Chinese to cede Taiwan to Japan,
6:42 which then remained a Japanese colony for the next half century.
6:46 Then a few years later in 1900,
6:48 Japanese troops participated in the suppression of the Boxer Rebellion
6:51 in China that resulted in tens of thousands of deaths.
6:55 Following the outbreak of the First World War in 1914,
6:58 the Japanese issued a series of secret demands to China
7:01 that came to be known as the 21 Demands,
7:03 which essentially demanded that the whole of China
7:06 subordinate itself into becoming a Japanese protectorate.
7:10 It only failed after China published the extreme
7:12 demands and sparked outrage by the British and Americans,
7:15 who pressured the Japanese to back down.
7:18 Later in 1931, the Imperial Japanese Army staged a false
7:21 flag attack that came to be known as the Mukden Incident,
7:24 which they used as their pretext to launch an invasion into Manchuria,
7:28 which they subsequently conquered and where they established
7:31 the puppet state of Manchukuo over in 1932.
7:34 Afterwards, the Japanese government encouraged a vast settler
7:37 colonial project in Manchuria to alter the region's
7:40 demographics that saw more than 1 million
7:43 Japanese settlers migrate into the territory by 1945.
7:48 Small clashes between the Japanese and Chinese armies continued on for years
7:52 until they outright exploded in a full-scale warfare in 1937,
7:57 when Japan launched a full-scale invasion across the rest
8:00 of China with the goal of outright conquest.
8:03 The ensuing Second Sino-Japanese War,
8:06 that lasted for the next eight years and spilled over into World War II,
8:10 ultimately became one of the deadliest conflicts in all of human history,
8:13 [music] resulting in the deaths of around 20 million people,
8:17 the vast majority of whom were simply Chinese civilians.
8:21 Throughout the war, Japanese forces perpetrated an almost endless
8:25 list of war crimes and atrocities against the Chinese people.
8:29 But the two most infamous examples that continues to strain relations
8:32 between the two countries today were the Nanjing Massacre and Unit 731.
8:37 Arguably two of the worst things that human beings have
8:40 ever done to one another at any point in our history.
8:44 After Japanese forces took control over the Chinese
8:46 city of Nanjing near the end of 1937, then the capital city,
8:50 they engaged in a brutal six-week-long rampage of mass murder,
8:55 looting, arson, torture,
8:57 and abuse directed against the city's Chinese inhabitants.
9:01 Newer estimates believe that up to 200,000 [music] Chinese people within
9:05 Nanjing were killed by the Japanese Army during this six-week massacre,
9:10 a rate of killing that is comparable to the Rwandan
9:13 genocide that would take place later in the 1990s.
9:17 Meanwhile, Unit 731 was a top-secret research facility that was operated
9:21 by the Imperial Japanese Army in occupied Manchuria throughout the war.
9:27 [music]
9:26 Unit 731 conducted large-scale research into chemical and biological weapons,
9:31 including brutal and lethal experiments conducted on live
9:34 human beings [music] who were usually abducted Chinese civilians.
9:38 Unit 731's victims were subjected
9:40 to deliberate deadly disease [music] infections,
9:42 chemical weapons and explosives testings, live limb amputations,
9:46 and live vivisections performed under no anesthesia so
9:50 as not to interfere with the potential results, [music] organ harvesting,
9:54 cold exposure and hypothermia testing, hyperbaric chamber testing,
9:58 and other brutal experiments that are collectively believed to have
10:01 killed around 14,000 [music] of humanity's most unfortunate ever victims.
10:08 Not a single person who ever entered into Unit
10:10 731's research testing is known to have survived.
10:13 While the biological weapons they developed led directly
10:16 to the deaths of at least another 200,000 more
10:19 people across Chinese villages and cities through the Japanese
10:23 army's deliberate contamination of water supplies and agricultural lands.
10:27 The legacy of these atrocities and Japan's 50-year war on China
10:31 continue to negatively impact relations between the two countries today.
10:35 And it frames the historical context in which China
10:38 often views Japan's modern military expansion that's currently taking place.
10:42 At the end of the Second World War,
10:44 when Japan was thoroughly defeated and occupied by the United States,
10:48 the country was made to surrender all
10:49 of its conquered territories back to China,
10:52 including Taiwan, and was made to adopt its new pacifist constitution
10:56 that renounced its right to war and the use of force forever,
10:59 effectively resulting in Japan's demilitarization.
11:03 [music] After suffering through millions of their own dead
11:05 over the course of the Second World War,
11:07 including the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,
11:11 the Japanese public was left traumatized and wary of war as well,
11:15 easing their transition towards pacifism in the postwar years.
11:19 Without the legal right to ever go to war again,
11:21 Japan also agreed to become incorporated into the American
11:24 security umbrella with the 1950 security treaty, [music]
11:27 which guarantees that the US will defend Japan's territory
11:30 in the event of a hostile attack in exchange
11:32 for Japan granting the US the right to base
11:34 large numbers of military forces within their country.
11:38 This arrangement at the time was mutually beneficial,
11:40 as it enabled Japan to outsource all of their defense needs to America,
11:44 which allowed them to fully concentrate on rebuilding
11:47 and then developing their economy in the postwar years instead.
11:50 While it enabled America to control a huge and strategically valuable
11:54 rear base of military operations in East Asia that it has
11:57 been able to use to great effect during wars in Korea
12:00 and Vietnam and [music] in buttressing the position of Taiwan against China.
12:05 And yet, relations between Japan and China continued
12:08 remaining tense [music] despite Japan's new commitment to pacifism.
12:12 After the end of the Chinese Civil War in 1949,
12:15 Japan continued recognizing the Republic of China's
12:17 government based on Taiwan and didn't
12:19 normalize their relations with the People's
12:21 Republic of China for years until 1972.
12:25 After the Korean War broke out in 1950,
12:27 the US encouraged Japan to establish an armed police
12:30 force that eventually evolved into the Self-Defense Forces by 1954.
12:34 But for decades, as Japan relied on the US military for defense
12:37 and focused all of its energies on rebuilding and then expanding their economy,
12:41 the growth of the Self-Defense Forces was kept at a minimum.
12:46 [music] It was organized to be the bare minimum force necessary
12:48 to defend the Japanese home islands themselves from an outside attack.
12:51 And so, they resisted acquiring any and all offensive capabilities
12:55 for decades and continued only being allocated a minimal budget.
12:59 By the late 1970s, an informal cap on the Self-Defense
13:03 Forces budget of 1% of GDP per year
13:05 had come into effect that would last all
13:08 the way up until our modern age in the 2020s.
13:11 After the end of the Cold War,
13:13 Japan's position initially seemed to feel even more secure with the collapse
13:17 of the Soviet Union and their continued
13:19 privileged position within the US security umbrella.
13:22 And so, no major push to expand the role
13:24 of the Self-Defense Forces would come for another generation.
13:28 But then, all of a sudden, beginning in the 2010s,
13:30 [music] Japan's geopolitical situation would begin
13:33 growing increasingly precarious due to four
13:36 major developing reasons that are pushing the country to now re-evaluate things.
13:41 The first reason has been an increasingly bold and aggressive
13:44 North Korea on their doorstep that's now armed with nuclear weapons.
13:48 North Korea conducted their first successful nuclear
13:50 weapons test in 2006, and since then,
13:54 they've conducted six additional nuclear weapons tests with the most recent
13:57 one reaching a threshold of 160 kilotons worth of explosive power,
14:02 10 times the power of the Hiroshima atomic bomb.
14:06 The Stockholm International Peace Research Institute,
14:09 which tracks the nuclear inventories of countries from around the world,
14:12 currently estimates that as of January 2025,
14:16 the North Koreans possess around 50 active nuclear weapons and have
14:20 enough fissile material to produce another 40 more in due time.
14:24 They've also likely already acquired the capability
14:26 to mount one of these nuclear weapons
14:28 to ballistic missiles that can [music] impact
14:30 and destroy any city in the Japanese home islands,
14:33 making North Korea an existential threat
14:36 to Japan's own survival for the first time.
14:39 The North Koreans are also known
14:40 to possess around a thousand ballistic missiles,
14:43 hundreds of which have the range and capability
14:45 to impact targets in Japan with conventional warheads as well.
14:49 While multiple North Korean missile tests have begun flying
14:51 directly over Japanese territory itself beginning in August of 2017,
14:56 with further flyovers taking place in September 2017,
14:59 October 2022, and January 2025, further putting Japan on edge.
15:05 Even worse, North Korea has been growing increasingly closer to Russia
15:09 and more militarily capable since the invasion of Ukraine began, too.
15:13 To date, North Korea is the only UN member state other than
15:17 Russia itself to have formally recognized
15:19 Russia's conquests and annexations in Eastern Ukraine.
15:22 North Korea has provided Russia with millions
15:25 of artillery shells for the war effort, and most provocatively of all,
15:28 they've even deployed thousands of their own soldiers to fight
15:31 against the Ukrainians during the Kursk Offensive in Russia in 2024.
15:36 While recent Ukrainian intelligence released in November
15:38 of 2025 appears to suggest that North Korean
15:42 troops are active in the Russian-occupied parts
15:44 of the Zaporizhzhia region of Ukraine as well,
15:47 potentially making North Korea an active
15:49 belligerent in Ukraine's invasion as well.
15:52 North Korea and Russia have signed a renewed
15:54 military alliance pledging the two to the other's defense.
15:57 [music] While the Russians are known to be
15:59 providing the North Koreans with many of their most
16:01 advanced military technologies in exchange for all of the support
16:04 the North Koreans are giving them in Ukraine.
16:07 The end result is that with increasing military
16:09 technology and real-world modern battlefield experience in Ukraine,
16:12 [music] the North Korean army is growing more capable and dangerous,
16:16 while its nuclear arsenal continues to pose
16:18 an existential threat to Japan's very existence.
16:21 [music] The second and probably the most important
16:25 reason has been an increasingly powerful and assertive China.
16:28 [music] Between 2013 and 2022,
16:31 while US military spending only increased by 2.7%,
16:35 Chinese military spending rocketed up by more than 63% over the same time frame.
16:41 As of 2024, the US continues to maintain the highest military spending
16:46 in the world at $997 billion a year compared to China's $314 billion a year.
16:54 But while America's military is engaged all around the world,
16:57 [music] China's military is only engaged regionally in East Asia.
17:01 Beginning in 2010, as China's ambitions began growing with its power,
17:05 China has also increasingly begun clashing with Japan on a number
17:09 of territorial disputes that had remained dormant for decades beforehand.
17:14 Between 2010 and 2012,
17:16 the two countries clashed bitterly over the status of the Senkaku Islands,
17:21 a small group of uninhabited rocks that Japan [music] controls
17:24 but which China claims and calls the Diaoyu Islands instead.
17:28 In 2012, the Japanese government purchased three
17:31 of these disputed islands from their private owner,
17:33 which triggered huge [music] anti-Japanese protests in China who saw
17:38 it as a Japanese attempt to establish their sovereignty over them.
17:41 China attempted to pressure Japan by temporarily restricting
17:45 the export of rare earth minerals to them,
17:47 the first time that China seriously weaponized its
17:50 trade relationship with Japan over a diplomatic dispute.
17:53 At around the same [music] time,
17:55 China unilaterally issued an extended maritime EEZ claim in the East
17:59 China Sea that significantly extended into Japan's own-claimed EEZ area,
18:05 introducing a major maritime dispute between the two
18:07 countries that still remains in place today.
18:10 Then in 2013, adding on even further pressure,
18:13 China unilaterally declared an extension of their air defense
18:16 identification zone across the East China Sea as well,
18:20 incorporating the Senkaku Islands and significantly overlapping
18:23 with the air defense identification zone claimed by Japan,
18:26 escalating the conflict between them even more.
18:29 China's growing arsenal of missiles has also
18:31 been of a particular concern to the Japanese.
18:34 As of 2024, the Pentagon believes
18:37 that China possesses around 400 intercontinental ballistic missiles,
18:41 500 intermediate-range ballistic missiles,
18:44 1,300 medium-range ballistic missiles,
18:47 900 short-range ballistic missiles, and 400 ground-launched cruise missiles,
18:52 meaning that in other words,
18:53 China now possesses hundreds upon hundreds of missiles at its disposal
18:57 that can reach the Japanese home islands in the event of a conflict.
19:01 The point was delivered by the Chinese profoundly in 2022 [music] when
19:06 then US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi made an official state visit to Taiwan,
19:11 after which China initiated large-scale military exercises
19:15 encircling Taiwan that included multiple ballistic missiles
19:18 being fired directly into Japan's maritime EEZ
19:22 just south of the Japanese island of Yonaguni,
19:25 clearly illustrating China's capability to strike Japanese
19:28 territory or warships if they so desired.
19:32 China and Japan alike both understand that the status of Taiwan
19:36 going forward is a core national interest of both of them.
19:40 For Japan, a Chinese takeover
19:42 of Taiwan would simply be geopolitically disastrous.
19:45 [music] China would break the continuous
19:48 link in the so-called first island chain,
19:50 the line of islands that Japan, the Ryukyu Islands, Taiwan,
19:54 the Philippines, and Indonesia,
19:56 that box the Chinese coast in and contain the Chinese
19:59 Navy's ability to break out into the open Pacific.
20:01 [music] Since the waters to the west
20:03 of the line are relatively shallow and easier
20:05 to detect submarine activity in than the deeper waters to the east of the line.
20:10 All of the countries along the first island chain from Japan to South
20:14 Korea to Taiwan and down to the Philippines are staunch US allies.
20:19 But with a successful Chinese takeover of Taiwan,
20:22 the chain would be broken and the Chinese Navy
20:24 would finally be able to access the greater Pacific unobstructed.
20:29 From their control of Taiwan,
20:31 China could further increase their pressure on the Senkaku
20:34 Islands dispute and their dispute in maritime and airspace
20:36 areas with Japan that have serious implications on potential
20:40 offshore natural gas reserves in the area as well.
20:43 And potentially worst of all,
20:45 [music] Japan's critical sea lines of communication would become more
20:48 exposed to their historic rival than they've ever been before.
20:53 Japan is enormously over dependent on maritime trade to survive.
20:57 Nearly 90% of Japan's energy imports transit into the country
21:01 through vulnerable maritime choke points like the waters near Taiwan.
21:05 If these sea lanes are compromised during a conflict exploding over Taiwan,
21:09 Japan holds a strategic petroleum reserve that contains
21:12 232 days worth of net oil imports.
21:16 But they only have a strategic LNG reserve
21:18 that holds just 19 days worth of net LNG imports.
21:23 If the war blockade over Taiwan lasts longer
21:25 than 40 days and keeps the sea lanes compromised,
21:28 Japan would begin facing strategic paralysis and an economy that would
21:32 begin grinding down without the energy
21:34 imports they need to continue functioning.
21:37 Rerouted energy imports away from around Taiwan
21:40 would add both time and cost to them.
21:42 [music] And there's no guarantee that China wouldn't just take advantage
21:44 of their control of Taiwan afterwards to continue interfering with them [music]
21:48 to apply even more pressure on Japan's economy later.
21:52 These are the reasons why Japan has long maintained
21:54 a policy of keeping the Indo-Pacific region both free and open,
21:58 a term that they themselves first coined before the US adopted
22:02 the same policy by the same name under the Obama administration later.
22:07 There's also a concern that no matter what Japan does,
22:10 they won't be able to stay out
22:11 of a Chinese invasion or blockade of Taiwan for long.
22:15 The island of Yonaguni, the southwesternmost island of Japan,
22:18 is merely 110 km away from Taiwan.
22:22 As such, it's an extremely important location to control
22:25 for both China and the US during a potential conflict scenario.
22:30 Yonaguni and the rest of the Japanese islands in the Ryukyu
22:33 chain stretching up to Okinawa will be vital for both sides
22:37 to control [music] as they'll be critical for establishing aerial supremacy
22:40 and logistics routes for US forces
22:42 resupplying Taiwanese forces or counter-attacking Chinese positions.
22:47 The islands are a major component of the US
22:49 fish hook underwater sensor network that's critical for America's ability
22:54 to detect Chinese submarines that can mean a break out
22:56 from beyond the first island chain into the open Pacific.
23:00 While the US positions the bulk of their own
23:02 military forces stationed in Japan nearby in Okinawa,
23:05 where some 30,000 US troops are permanently forward deployed at.
23:10 If the US intervened during a Taiwan conflict, even if Japan itself didn't,
23:15 China would be likely to at least use their missiles
23:18 to bombard American bases and assets [music] in Okinawa.
23:22 And under extreme scenarios,
23:23 they might even attempt to launch amphibious operations
23:26 to try and seize the southwesternmost Japanese islands between Yonaguni
23:30 and Miyakojima in order to secure their northern flank around
23:34 Taiwan against potential US reinforcements and naval and air operations.
23:38 Thus, there are major legitimate reasons why
23:41 Japan fears that their territory could come under
23:43 attack or even under occupation and their economy
23:47 threatened by a Chinese assault on Taiwan.
23:50 There was also the risk military action taken
23:52 by China in the Taiwan Strait or military action
23:54 taken by North Korea in the Korean Peninsula could
23:57 encourage escalation by the other within their respective theaters.
24:01 [music] China might encourage North Korea
24:02 to ratchet up hostilities in the Korean Peninsula
24:05 in order to distract and tie down US and allied assets away from Taiwan.
24:10 And even if they don't do that, a full-blown Chinese
24:13 attack on Taiwan that draws in US assets would inevitably
24:16 present an opportunity for North Korea to take advantage
24:19 of the distraction and increase escalation on their own accord in Korea.
24:23 Thus, there is a major fear for Japan and America
24:27 that they could end up facing a two-front war in East
24:30 Asia under the worst-case scenario [music] with conflicts breaking out
24:33 in the Taiwan Strait and the Korean Peninsula almost simultaneously.
24:38 Even if none of that happens though,
24:40 the mere chance that North Korea might escalate in the Korean
24:44 Peninsula during a Taiwan conflict will force Japan and the US
24:47 to hold at least some of their resources in reserve rather
24:51 than being able to focus everything they have against China alone.
24:55 Okay.
24:56 Now, the third reason why Japan is reconsidering the Self-Defense Forces' modern
25:00 role is the Trump administration's wavering
25:02 commitments to defend US allies, including Japan.
25:06 Trump has publicly suggested that he wouldn't send
25:09 US forces to protect NATO states in Europe coming under attack who he felt had
25:14 not been paying their fair share towards defense.
25:16 And he's openly criticized the long-standing US-Japan
25:20 security treaty that's been in effect since 1950.
25:23 As recently as March of 2025, Trump plainly stated that he felt the security
25:28 treaty with Japan was unfair and a bad deal.
25:31 Because while it pledges the US to come
25:34 to the defense of Japan during an attack,
25:36 it doesn't pledge Japan to come to the US's
25:39 defense during an attack in the other direction.
25:42 Japanese officials were quick to point out, of course,
25:45 that the treaty is also what enables the US to station tens of thousands
25:49 of their troops in Japan across dozens of bases
25:52 that Japan ultimately bears the burden of hosting.
25:55 This has led to fears in Japan that the US might not
25:58 actually be serious about really assisting
26:01 them during an emergency scenario around Taiwan.
26:04 And knowing that the US military is globally engaged all around
26:07 the world while the Chinese military is only regionally engaged in East Asia,
26:12 Japan has felt the pressure to increase their own
26:15 military spending to help out and compensate or to hedge.
26:19 Then the fourth and final reason
26:21 for Japan's remilitarization was the precedent that was
26:23 set by Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine that was launched in early 2022,
26:29 showing clearly that massive wars of conquest launched by one
26:33 state against another wasn't a relic of the past.
26:36 Only months after the invasion began,
26:39 then Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida warned that Ukraine
26:43 today may well [music] be East Asia tomorrow.
26:46 While polls showed that around 90% of the public believed that their country
26:50 needed to do more to prepare for a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan.
26:55 And thus, because of all these various threats,
26:58 Japan has felt compelled to begin acting.
27:01 Evolving from the reinterpretation of the Constitution's
27:03 Article 9 in 2015 that has enabled Japan to act in collective self-defense
27:08 of its allies who fall under attack.
27:10 And then Japan's announcement within months
27:12 of Russia's invasion of Ukraine in 2022
27:14 [music] that they would double their defense spending at 2% of GDP by 2027.
27:20 And recently expedited to happen by 2026.
27:22 [music] In February of 2025, for the first time ever,
27:28 the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Forces
27:30 provocatively sailed a destroyer directly
27:33 through the Taiwan Strait in order to send a message,
27:36 which triggered a spokesperson with China's
27:38 [music] Ministry of National Defense to say,
27:41 "Quote, China respects the navigation rights
27:43 of all countries under international law,
27:46 but firmly opposes any country creating trouble in the Taiwan Strait,
27:51 infringing upon China's sovereignty and security,
27:54 and sending wrong signals to the Taiwan independence separatist [music] forces.
27:59 End quote." And that incident was even
28:01 before current Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's remarks,
28:04 [music] which suggested that a Chinese attack
28:06 on Taiwan would be interpreted by Japan
28:08 as a trigger of collective self-defense [music]
28:10 and would lead directly to an armed Japanese intervention.
28:14 So, what exactly is Japan planning to acquire
28:17 and do with its double defense budget?
28:19 First, and probably most controversially of all,
28:22 Japan plans to finally equip the Self-Defense
28:25 Forces with strike capabilities like long-range cruise missiles.
28:28 [music] Japan has since declared their intent
28:31 to purchase 400 US-made Tomahawk cruise missiles,
28:35 which can accurately strike targets up to 2,400 km away and which
28:39 can be equipped on Japan's naval assets like destroyers and submarines,
28:44 giving the Maritime Self-Defense Forces the ability for the first time
28:47 ever to strike targets deep within the Chinese or North Korean interiors.
28:53 This capability was long considered to be
28:55 taboo for the Self-Defense Forces to have.
28:58 Why, after all, should constitutionally
29:01 pacifist Japan possess these offensive weapons
29:04 with such long ranges capable of striking their enemies' territories directly?
29:09 To get around the optics of this acquisition,
29:11 Japan likes to use the term counter-strike capability
29:14 instead of strike capability when referring to the missiles,
29:18 emphasizing that they won't be used
29:20 for preemptive strikes against their adversaries
29:22 and will only be used after Japan itself comes under attack first.
29:27 In November of 2025,
29:29 a Japanese destroyer arrived in California to pick up the very
29:32 first set of these Tomahawk missiles that they have on order,
29:35 and hundreds more of them are soon to follow along with several hundred
29:39 other domestically produced long-range anti-ship missiles
29:43 that are being developed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries,
29:45 called the Type 12 missile,
29:47 which will have a range of about a thousand kilometers.
29:51 Japan has also been steadily increasing
29:53 and approving their submarine Fleet as well.
29:56 Back in 2010 when the modern confrontation with China was just beginning,
29:59 Japan only possessed a fleet of just 16 submarines,
30:03 but it's grown to 24 of them as of today in 2025.
30:08 While all of Japan's submarines so
30:10 far conventionally powered by electric diesel engines,
30:14 the newest generation of Japanese submarines called the Taigei class
30:18 that was introduced in March of 2022 are extremely capable machines nonetheless.
30:23 [music] Nicknamed the sea ninjas by the Japanese,
30:27 they are very quiet and excellent for reconnaissance missions
30:30 and are capable of covertly deploying sea mines and launching torpedoes.
30:35 They're also expected to be armed with a US
30:37 supplied Tomahawk cruise missiles which will enable them to launch
30:40 long-range precision counter-strikes against
30:43 targets thousands of kilometers deep
30:45 within the Chinese interior if they decided do so.
30:49 Currently, the Japanese submarine Fleet consists of five of these modern
30:53 Taigei class subs and 15 older generation Soryu class subs,
30:57 but two more Taigei class subs are expected
31:00 to join the fleet and become operational by 2027.
31:04 And it will likely be these seven modern
31:06 and quiet subs that the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Forces
31:10 would deploy to the southwesternmost Ryukyu Islands during
31:13 a Taiwan conflict where their mission would be to hunt
31:16 and attack Chinese submarines attempting to break through
31:19 the first island chain and to kill surface warships attempting
31:22 amphibious assaults on them and to potentially fire counter-strike
31:26 salvos of Tomahawks and military targets within China itself.
31:31 Japan's older generation of submarines and their surface warships, meanwhile,
31:35 would be dedicated to keeping Japan's sea
31:37 lines of communication and imports of oil and LNG as open and secure
31:41 as physically possible through escort missions with tankers.
31:45 Japan has also even inquired about potentially acquiring
31:48 US nuclear-powered submarines as well following recent American
31:53 agreements to provide them to other allies
31:55 in the Indo-Pacific region like South Korea and Australia.
31:59 Japan also intends to use its double defense spending to acquire
32:02 no fewer than 147 F-35 fighter jets from the United
32:07 States as well which will make Japan the second
32:10 largest operator of the F-35 only after the US itself.
32:15 The fighters will be capable of being armed
32:17 with long-range cruise missiles as well that, like the submarines,
32:20 will be capable of striking targets
32:22 deep within the Chinese interior if necessary.
32:25 105 of the F-35s on order by Japan will be conventional models,
32:30 but notably 42 of them will be the F-35B
32:33 short take-off and vertical landing model of the fighter.
32:38 [music] This is important because these are the F-35s that are being planned
32:41 by the Japanese to be deployed
32:42 to their upgraded Izumo class helicopter carriers.
32:46 Japan possesses two of these types of small aircraft carriers,
32:49 the Izumo and the Kaga,
32:51 which were of course originally designed to carry helicopters,
32:55 but now Japan is using the money they're
32:57 pouring into the military to retrofit and upgrade both
33:00 of these carriers to enable them to each transport
33:02 and launch up to 12 of the F-35Bs at a time
33:06 which together will give Japan one of the strongest
33:09 power projection capabilities in the world and will
33:12 enable them to fight more effectively for aerial supremacy
33:15 in hotspots like the East and South China Seas.
33:18 When they're completed around 2027, the Izumo and the Kaga will notably
33:23 become the first Japanese naval vessels to operate
33:25 fixed-wing aircraft since the days of the Imperial
33:28 Japanese Navy during World War II.
33:31 Many of the Mitsubishi Heavy Industries type 12 missiles are planned to be
33:35 stationed on the island of Kyushu by the spring of 2026 as well
33:39 which will give Japan extensive missile coverage from the safety of the home
33:43 islands across all of the Ryukyu
33:45 Island chain extending [music] across the southwest.
33:48 And across the parts of the island chain from Okinawa to Yonaguni,
33:52 the Japanese are planning even more preparations.
33:55 The island of Yonaguni closest to Taiwan is growing increasingly militarized.
34:00 The Japanese have already set up a surveillance radar
34:02 facility on the island and deployed an electronic warfare
34:05 unit there in 2024 that'll be used to jam
34:08 enemy communications and guidance systems around Taiwan's northern flank.
34:13 And in 2025, they confirmed that they'll shortly be
34:16 deploying batteries of medium-range surface-to-air missiles to the island
34:20 as well presumably to help guard against Chinese aircraft
34:23 and drones that might attempt attacks from this direction.
34:26 The island of Ishigaki further to the east
34:29 is being armed with anti-ship missiles while Miyakojima even
34:32 further to the east is being equipped with missiles
34:35 as well and is getting transformed into a hub
34:38 for air surveillance and ammunition storage depots that'll
34:41 be able to be accessed by Japanese and American
34:44 amphibious warfare units for counterattacks presumably coming down
34:48 the chain from the principal US military bases on Okinawa.
34:51 Beginning in November of 2025 as the crisis
34:54 between Japan and China [music] continued escalating,
34:57 the US Marines were observed to begin
34:59 conducting exercises moving supplies like fuel
35:02 and ammunition from Okinawa to Yonaguni presumably
35:05 to simulate establishing a forward operating base there.
35:08 While the Japanese themselves have also
35:10 begun training and creating a new amphibious
35:12 rapid deployment Brigade that's based on Kyushu
35:15 that is being modeled after the US Marine Corps and being tasked with a mission
35:19 of recapturing islands in the Ryukyu
35:21 chain that might fall beneath Chinese occupation
35:24 in the event of a full-scale conflict.
35:27 Within the city of Oita on Kyushu,
35:29 the Japanese are currently building four new large
35:32 ammunition depots that'll house anti-ship and ground attack
35:35 missiles positioning still more assets nearby to the Ryukyu
35:39 Islands in the event of a contingency.
35:42 Japan is also expanding its abilities to evacuate their citizens
35:45 in the event of a full-scale war in the Taiwan Strait.
35:48 If the worst comes to pass
35:50 and the southwestern Ryukyu Islands become a war zone,
35:53 Japan will seriously have to consider
35:55 the prospect of evacuating tens of thousands
35:58 of the island's Japanese residents to safety far away back on the main islands.
36:02 And so the Maritime Self-Defense Forces have
36:04 to be adequately prepared to carry that mission out.
36:07 And while it's not being actively considered yet,
36:10 it's always a possibility that eventually the Japanese
36:13 might calculate that the time has finally arrived
36:16 to acquire their own independent nuclear weapons arsenal
36:19 as well in order to guarantee maximum deterrence.
36:23 Japan possesses the technology, resources,
36:25 and technical expertise required to likely be
36:28 able to build a functioning nuclear weapon
36:30 in less than a single year's time if they really put their mind to it.
36:34 The only things that have so far prevented them
36:36 from doing so have been their own taboo against nuclear weapons,
36:40 US opposition, and the US security guarantees
36:43 that puts them under their nuclear umbrella anyway.
36:45 But in the event that those things change,
36:48 especially the US security guarantees, then Japan would almost certainly acquire
36:52 their own nuclear weapon rapidly to guarantee
36:55 deterrence against their nuclear-armed adversaries in China
36:58 and North Korea and potentially Russia, too.
37:01 Japan has seen the precedent of Ukraine who
37:04 surrendered their nuclear weapons in exchange for security
37:07 assurances only to become invaded and face
37:09 a war of conquest fewer than 30 years later.
37:12 In the event of a Taiwan conflict,
37:14 Japan could conceivably respond in one of four
37:17 different ways with varying levels of escalation and risk.
37:20 [music] In one scenario,
37:22 Japan might choose to take a strictly defensive stance declining
37:26 to trigger its security law for collective self-defense [music] and choosing
37:29 instead to focus on surveillance and missile defense over
37:32 the Ryukyu Islands and evacuating its citizens if and when necessary.
37:37 This approach might keep Japan out of the conflict,
37:39 but it would inevitably cause great harm
37:42 to Japan's relationship with the United States.
37:45 Under a second scenario, Japan could take a slightly more aggressive
37:48 approach and provide logistical support to American
37:51 forces in the conflict allowing the US to access fuel and ammunition depots,
37:55 utilize their bases for air and naval operations,
37:59 and using their Maritime Self-Defense Forces
38:01 to keep the sea lines of communication open.
38:04 Under this scenario, the Self-Defense Forces would still at least
38:07 be trying to avoid direct conflict with China, but China might still come to see
38:12 Japan as heavily assisting the American war effort
38:16 which might expose Japanese territory to retaliatory attacks
38:19 and still drag them into the war anyway.
38:21 Under a third and much more aggressive scenario,
38:24 Japan could simply choose to invoke its right to collective self-defense
38:28 by declaring an assault on Taiwan a survivable threatening crisis for them,
38:33 but still try and avoid direct combat around Taiwan itself.
38:37 Instead, the Japanese Self-Defense Forces could focus
38:39 on safeguarding the Ryukyu Islands by intercepting Chinese aircraft,
38:43 drones, missiles, submarines,
38:45 and ships attempting to attack or break through them.
38:48 While their warships could escort American naval
38:50 vessels through critical Maritime choke points nearby
38:53 Taiwan like the Miyako Strait in the north and the Bashi Channel in the south.
38:58 A final, fourth, and dramatically more aggressive option they could take
39:01 would be to fully commit the Self-Defense Forces to heavy combat
39:05 operations in and around Taiwan itself which might involve firing their new
39:10 long-range cruise missiles to strike military targets within China itself which,
39:16 of course, would make Japan a direct combatant in the war
39:19 and possibly incur the full wrath of China in retaliation.
39:24 Regardless of which option Japan might ultimately choose
39:26 to take if and when a Taiwan contingency actually materializes,
39:30 the country also faces significant
39:32 domestic problems towards its re-militarization drive.
39:35 For one thing, there's major issues on how exactly to pay for it.
39:39 Japan already has one of the highest national debts
39:42 in the world as a percentage of their GDP,
39:45 currently standing at around 237% nearly double
39:49 the debt ratio of the United States.
39:51 Tacking on even more debt to pay
39:53 for the military expansion is a difficult prospect,
39:56 which leaves the unpopular choice of increasing taxes
40:00 in the country to pay for it instead.
40:02 A politically difficult option since Japan already has very high tax
40:06 rates due to the country's rapidly aging population and social welfare programs.
40:11 And speaking of aging populations,
40:13 Japan has a critical shortage of available manpower to fill their ranks as well.
40:18 The numbers of young men in Japan aged between 18 and 26,
40:22 the prime age for military service,
40:24 peaked more than 30 years ago back in 1994 at around 17 million.
40:30 By 2020, that number of young military-age men in the country had shrunk to only
40:34 11 million and it is projected to further shrink beneath 8 million by 2050.
40:40 Fewer than half the numbers of young men available they had in the 1990s.
40:45 Low pay, tough work, low unemployment in the private sector,
40:49 and the limited prestige of serving in the armed forces of a constitutionally
40:53 pacifist nation have further discouraged recruitment
40:57 among the shrinking pool of manpower,
41:00 meaning that the Self-Defense Forces have missed
41:02 the recruitment targets every single year since 2014.
41:06 Moreover, the Self-Defense Forces,
41:08 like any credible or relevant real-world combat experience today.
41:12 The last time that a Japanese soldier is known
41:15 to have been killed in action was back in 1972.
41:18 And that guy was a fanatical holdout from World War II who died
41:23 in a shootout with police in the Philippines
41:25 decades after the war had already ended.
41:28 The Self-Defense Forces themselves have never once experienced
41:31 a fatality in combat in their entire history.
41:34 Will they and the Japanese public
41:36 at large actually be prepared for potentially enormous
41:40 rates of casualties during a major hot war with China and or North Korea?
41:46 I don't know, but overcoming these issues will
41:48 be a significant hurdle for Japan to overcome.
41:52 Neither Japan nor China currently seeking war with each other,
41:55 but the legacy of their shared histories and their mutual
41:58 military preparations in the present are increasingly making each other nervous,
42:03 causing a cycle of increasingly hostile rhetoric and actions.
42:07 Xi Jinping's China is determined to establish
42:10 the authority of the Communist Party over Taiwan.
42:13 In their eyes, finally unifying China in the process
42:17 and ending the legacy of China's century of humiliation.
42:20 If Japan intervenes,
42:22 China will see it as nothing less than a historical showdown like
42:25 the last time Japanese forces overran Taiwan in the late 19th century.
42:29 [music] As is already being shown
42:31 in modern Chinese propaganda like this example,
42:35 they will interpret a Japanese intervention as a Japanese
42:38 attempt to prevent the unification of their country.
42:41 While the Japanese will interpret a Chinese attack
42:43 on Taiwan as a dangerous act of aggression
42:46 that'll threaten their long-term stability and their citizens'
42:49 lives on the small Japanese islands nearby.
42:53 Neither side wants war, but neither side will be willing to back
42:57 down when the stakes are also this high.
43:00 In Japan's view, as once said
43:02 by the legendary Japanese samurai Miyamoto Musashi,
43:06 it is better to be a soldier in a garden than a gardener in a war.
43:11 In some ways though, Japan has been in a hostile confrontation
43:14 with its neighbors in East Asia for longer
43:16 than most people are probably aware of, especially when it comes to North Korea.
43:21 Though North Korea has repeatedly fired
43:23 missiles over Japanese territory since 2017,
43:26 the North Koreans have also done much worse
43:28 than that to the Japanese in earlier decades.
43:31 Between 1977 and 1983,
43:33 hundreds of Japanese people began mysteriously disappearing without a trace,
43:38 usually along the country's coastlines.
43:41 For decades, there were no clear explanations for all
43:43 of these disappearances because they were usually just ordinary average people.
43:48 For a long time, the disappearances were the subject
43:51 of various conspiracy theories among the Japanese public.
43:54 Some of them even outlandishly purporting that North
43:57 Korea was somehow behind all of them,
44:00 though hardly anybody actually believed that.
44:03 That is until decades later in 2002 when Kim
44:08 Jong-il just outright confessed to the Japanese prime minister during
44:12 a meeting that his country had indeed secretly abducted at least
44:16 13 Japanese citizens in the past and apologized for them.
44:21 Since then, the Japanese government has formally recognized that at least 17
44:24 of their citizens were abducted by the North Koreans between 1977 and 1983,
44:29 though independent investigations believe that the true
44:31 number is likely in the hundreds,
44:33 confirming those once outlandish-sounding conspiracy theories that had
44:37 persisted in Japan relating to the disappearances for decades.
44:41 These abductions were an organized program under
44:43 the reign of Kim Il-sung in North Korea,
44:46 the grandfather of the current country's ruler Kim Jong-un,
44:49 and the original founder of the Kim dynasty who personally ruled
44:53 for nearly 46 years across the second half of the 20th century.
44:58 To this date, Kim Il-sung is still officially regarded
45:01 by North Korea's legal system to be the country's eternal president,
45:06 even though he died decades ago back in 1994.
45:09 [music] He is still heralded as nearly a god in the country along
45:13 with his son and grandson who have
45:15 both taken over the country's rule following him.
45:18 And I think that understanding him and how
45:20 he molded North Korea into the bizarre necro-hereditary dictatorship
45:25 that is today is a major lesson in what
45:27 can happen with truly unchecked power in the modern world.
45:31 And so, I made an entire new documentary exploring the dark
45:35 world and life of Kim Il-sung and the most outlandish
45:39 things he did while ruling North Korea for decades
45:42 in my brand new original documentary series that I'm calling Mad Kings,
45:47 which will take deeper dives into the terrible personal lives
45:50 and erratic policy decisions of recent megalomaniacal and eccentric dictators.
45:56 But because of the inherently violent details surrounding Kim Il-sung,
46:01 including details and depictions of multiple acts of terrorism
46:04 that he personally ordered across the 1980s and '90s,
46:08 my documentary investigating his reign would never work
46:11 on YouTube because it would instantly become demonetized and age-restricted,
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46:20 actually be incentivized to show the video to you or to promote it.
46:24 I deal with very large numbers of my videos
46:26 on YouTube getting demonetized and age-restricted as they already are,
46:30 including my recent video from just last month
46:33 covering the ongoing events taking place in Darfur.
46:36 And that's why I'm uploading all of my documentaries and Mad Kings,
46:39 including this one on Kim Il-sung, exclusively to Nebula instead.
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49:29 [music] And as always, thank you so much for watching.