By Shinichi Kitaoka / Special to The Yomiuri Shimbun

11:00 JST, October 23, 2026

The term “national interests” hasn’t been used much in Japan since the end of World War II. The reason is, before and during the war, the interests of many people were suppressed “for the sake of national interests.”

In 1927 and 1928, the Cabinet of then Prime Minister Giichi Tanaka dispatched troops to the Shandong Peninsula in China three times, to protect the Japanese nationals residing there and the interests of Japan. However, despite the deployment of as many as 100,000 troops and the costs involved, which reached the equivalent of ¥200 billion today, the operation yielded meager results. Japan’s relations with China deteriorated severely, and the operation aroused the distrust of even the United Kingdom and the United States.

At the time, many people believed that temporarily evacuating the Japanese residents would be more effective. It’s clear which solution would have truly served Japan’s national interests.

In March 1933, Japan withdrew from the League of Nations, saying it was dissatisfied with the report of the Lytton Commission on the Manchurian Incident. The Japanese people were elated at this development, but in reality, exiting the League of Nations only deepened Japan’s isolation.

Up until that time, Japan had many privileges as a permanent member of the League of Nations Council. It gave them up merely for its sense of pride.

From then on — from the outbreak of the second Sino-Japanese War to the Pacific War — the term “national interests” was abused to the extent that there were countless cases in which people’s interests — the true national interests — were trampled upon.

I think it was in 1999 when the term “national interests” was used in a high-level document in Japan for the first time in the postwar era. It was used by a high-profile commission launched by then Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi. I was on the commission’s sub-committee on diplomacy and security. One day, a debate arose over whether we should use the term. I was in favor of using it, but some members felt it was too soon.

Then, in his speech during a dinner he hosted for the commission members, Obuchi himself used that term so often, we agreed to use it in the planned report of the commission titled “The Frontier Within: Individual........

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