SAGAMI BAY, Japan: Prime Minister Fumio Kishida pledged on Sunday to beef up Japan’s naval and military capacity, warning that nations must prepare to face aggressors.
Kishida also condemned Russia’s war in Ukraine and denounced North Korea’s recent blitz of missile tests, one of which flew over Japan for the first time since 2017 and prompted a rare evacuation warning.
“We must prepare ourselves for an era when actors emerge to disobey rules and use force or threats to destroy the peace and safety of other nations,” Kishida said as he addressed Japan’s international fleet review.
The leader’s remarks come as Tokyo is drafting security plans that may call for doubling the nation’s defence spending within five years. That would represent a sea change in Japan, where the pacifist constitution limits its military capacity. “We will accelerate realistic discussions on what’s needed to defend our people by keeping all options on the table,” Kishida said.
“The enhancement (of Japan’s naval capacity) cannot wait, including construction of new naval ships, bolstering our missile defence capacity and improvement of the work conditions and compensations for our (military) personnel,” he said.
He did not name China but said that “the national security environment surrounding our nation is growing more severe including the East China Sea and South China Sea,” where Beijing has taken assertive positions in territorial disputes with countries including Japan. Kishida added that Japan will ensure transparency of its military spending.
“Japan will maintain our way as a pacifist country as we have done so since the end of (World War II),” he said.
The fleet review gathered ships from Japan and 12 other countries — including Australia, India and the United States — at Sagami Bay, south of Tokyo. South Korea also took part for the first time in seven years, as Tokyo and Seoul attempt to mend strained relations.
MEETING PLAN
The Japanese and Chinese governments have started planning a meeting between Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and China’s President Xi Jinping for mid-November, the Sankei newspaper reported.
The meeting would be held alongside an international conference set to take place in Southeast Asia, the Sankei said, citing multiple government sources.
The latest in-person China-Japan summit was in 2019, when Xi met with then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in Beijing. Xi was set to visit Japan in 2020 as a state guest, but the trip was postponed because of the coronavirus pandemic.
Chief Cabinet Secretary Hirokazu Matsuno told a regular news conference that nothing has been decided on a summit meeting with China but that it is important to maintain dialogue at various levels.
“Through both governments’ endeavours, we aim to build constructive and stable ties with China, in which dialogue is firmly maintained and cooperation takes place on matters of common challenges,” Matsuno said.
The Xi-Kishida meeting would be on the sidelines of a summit of the Group of 20 big economies in Indonesia on November 15-16, or at a meeting between leaders of Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) countries on November 18-19 in Bangkok, Sankei said.
Sino-Japanese ties have long been plagued by a dispute over a group of tiny uninhabited East China Sea islets, a legacy of Japan’s World War Two aggression and regional rivalry.
Bilateral ties were strained further after China fired ballistic missiles into waters near Japan as part of a military exercise Beijing launched in August.
Arrangements are being made for trilateral meetings between Kishida, United States President Joe Biden, and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol in mid-November as well, news agency Jiji reported, amid heightening tensions in the Korean peninsula over North Korea’s repeated missile launches. A summit between Kishida and Yoon is also in the works, the Nikkei newspaper said. — Agencies
