Photograph Source: 依田奏 – CC BY 4.0

Two weeks after she asserted that a military threat to Taiwan would spur military intervention by Japan, commentators continue to ask themselves what on earth Sanae Takaichi, the country’s new leader, had in mind when she blurted out such a provocative statement on such a sensitive issue.

China’s response was immediate and angry. Aside from taking Takaichi to task for intervening in a domestic concern, Beijing discouraged its citizens from traveling to Japan, and its consul general in Osaka posted on X that “the dirty neck that sticks its neck in must be cut off.” A ban on Japanese seafood exports to China was announced, and a large number of planned concerts by Japanese entertainers were cancelled, with Japanese singer Maki Otsuki stopped in the middle of a song during a concert in Shanghai. The latest casualties are youth exchange programs between the two countries, with Beijing apparently adamant that things will not return to normal until Takaichi retracts her statement.

Firestorm on the Net

Not surprisingly, Takaichi’s comments triggered an Internet firestorm in China, where Japan’s wartime crimes remain vivid and the Japanese prime minister had the image of being a hawkish protégé of the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who represented for many Chinese the unreconstructed, unrepentant attitude of many Japanese towards their country’s World War II-era war crimes.

What exactly did Takaichi say? At a parliamentary budget hearing, she asserted, in response to a question, that an attack on Taiwan involving warships would represent a “survival threatening” situation that would require Japanese military intervention. Previous Japanese prime ministers had never specified how Japan would respond to a Chinese military move against Taiwan. As one observer put it, “The difference in Takaichi’s remarks was less the content of what she said, and more the directness with which she said it. Her comments could perhaps be interpreted as moving further away from Japan’s version of a ‘strategic ambiguity’ policy, by directly linking Japan’s own security with the security of Taiwan.”

The most benign interpretation of Takaichi’s words was that they were uttered in the context of a parliamentary debate by a prime minister who was still learning the ropes and who made an error of making explicit a course of action best left vague. Those taking this view say that it could not be reconciled with the tenor of a meeting between Takaichi and........

© CounterPunch