In 2005, the Japanese pop artist Takashi Murakami wrote that the nickname for the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima – ‘Little Boy’– had become an apt description of Japan itself. After the second world war’s end in 1945, the United States had set its former enemy on the path towards becoming a peaceful and prosperous country, but one with a hollowed-out political identity and little sense of sovereign agency. The result, argued Murakami, was Japan as America’s little boy: cute, submissive, and populated by ‘pampered children’.

That child is now growing up. Its youthful kawaii (‘cute’) aesthetic sits ever more awkwardly alongside a demographic crisis involving an ageing and declining population. Previous levels of prosperity and pampering are long-gone, thanks to decades of low growth that have left Japan with a national debt in excess of 200 per cent of GDP. America, meanwhile, is no longer the attentive parent, pivoting from support for democracies around the world towards self-interested deal-making with no particular affection for postwar offspring like Japan.

The ‘little boy’ of the past – if ever he really existed, in the way Murakami claimed – is gone

The ‘little boy’ of the past – if ever he really existed, in the way Murakami claimed – is gone

Questions in Japan over its alliance with the US, alongside the threat from China and a nuclear-armed North Korea, appear to be driving the country towards a distinctly muscular form of adulthood. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is leading the transformation, risking the wrath of her struggling electorate by committing the cash-strapped country to spending the equivalent of £50 billion annually on defence and security. Much of this is being ploughed into the weaponry of the........

© The Spectator