Is this a new age of warrior Japan?

IMAGINE a weekend outing for a Japanese family, and a tour of a warship may not come to mind. Yet thousands came to see the Ise, a light aircraft-carrier, when it moored off Sendai, on Japan’s north-east coast, earlier this month. Children scrambled around a helicopter on the deck. Enthusiasts snapped photos of anti-aircraft turrets. Many expressed gratitude for the Self-Defence Forces (SDF), as Japan’s armed forces are called. “The SDF protects us. It’s a wonderful thing,” gushed Yamazaki Saori, who took her daughter. “Japan is facing so many threats.”

Such events reflect how much has changed in Japan, which has had a fraught relationship with military power since its defeat in the second world war. Through much of the post-war period Japan preferred to focus on economic development and leave security to America, its main ally. In recent decades China’s rise, North Korea’s acquisition of nuclear weapons and America’s unreliability changed that calculus; Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022 dispelled any remaining illusions that peace can be taken for granted. As Ishiyama Shuichi, an SDF veteran who visited the Ise, put it, “People no longer have heiwa bokeh,” a phrase meaning “the peace blur” (or, if used derisively, “peace senility”).