Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s impressive victory in this month’s general election signifies a pivotal moment in the maturation of the Japanese state — a mandate to shed what Chinese scholars Zhang Yong and Meng Fanchao describe as the postwar “loser’s logic,” a psychological and legal framework that has long paralyzed Japan’s ability to act as a sovereign equal in the international arena.

Yet her mandate comes at a moment of profound geopolitical fragility. Often mischaracterized by detractors as a radical nationalist, Takaichi represents a center-right continuity of the “Abe line,” a pragmatic strategy aimed not at militarism, but at normalization.

Takaichi’s foreign-policy team finds itself wedged between a revisionist China, whose values and interests are fundamentally incompatible with Tokyo’s, and a United States under President Donald Trump’s second term that has devolved into an unpredictable and transactional partner.

Takaichi’s primary imperative is to secure Japan’s sovereignty without becoming a vassal to Washington or a victim of Beijing. While the national interests of Tokyo and Washington remain deeply aligned in preventing a Sino-centric hegemony in the Indo-Pacific, the nature of U.S. power has shifted. As C. Raja Mohan, a prominent Indian strategist, points out in a recent Foreign Affairs article, the world remains “unipolar” rather than “multipolar” — as many contend — but the unipole, the U.S., has abdicated its responsibilities.

Under Trump, Washington has succumbed to what the American political scientist Stephen M. Walt terms “predatory hegemony,” a strategy where the U.S. leverages its privileged position to extract tribute rather than provide public goods. For Takaichi, the challenge is to navigate this predatory ally while deterring an existential threat across the East China Sea.

The threat from China is distinct and acute. Beijing views Takaichi’s “normal country”........

© The Japan Times