On November 7th, during a session of Japan’s Lower House Budget Committee, Prime Minister Takaichi made a remark that immediately stirred controversy. She was asked whether a Chinese maritime blockade of Taiwan would constitute a “situation threatening Japan’s survival,” which would legally enable Japan to exercise collective self-defense. Her answer was blunt: “If battleships are deployed and the use of force is involved, then yes, it could fall under that category.”
In effect, the prime minister had suggested that a Taiwan contingency might trigger Japanese military involvement, a statement of enormous weight in East Asian security.
The reaction was swift. The Chinese Consul General in Osaka posted on X in Japanese,
“If that filthy head of yours sticks itself in where it doesn’t belong, we’ll cut it off without hesitation.”Japanese social media erupted with outrage, “Stand firm against China!” “Don’t tolerate insults to the prime minister!”—an explosion of pure emotion, detached from context or strategy.
The diplomat’s comment was, of course, wildly inappropriate and unbecoming of his position. But what troubles me far more is why the prime minister chose to recklessly abandon the strategic ambiguity that Japan, and the United States, have spent decades maintaining in order to prevent precisely this sort of escalation.
Former Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba criticized her remarks succinctly,
“No previous administration has ever defined specific cases regarding Taiwan. That is something governments have deliberately avoided.”Indeed. And not only in Japan. Even the United States officially upholds the “One China” policy and refrains from stating clearly what Taiwan’s legal status should be. Donald Trump—often caricatured as impulsive—never overturned the Republican Party’s long-standing strategic ambiguity. President Biden, on the other hand, has repeatedly hinted that the U.S. would defend Taiwan militarily, only for the White House to rush out statements afterward insisting that “U.S. policy has not changed.”
The danger of Takaichi’s remark lies in the opposite response, there was no clarification, no correction, only a doubling down. On November 10th, when pressed to retract her statement, she refused, saying only that her remarks “did not alter the government’s traditional stance.”
To even discuss this issue responsibly, one needs at least a minimal grasp of modern history. Many of those shouting patriotic slogans online seem unaware of how we arrived at the current delicate balance. At the very least, one must understand the chain of events from Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government in the 1920s to the 1979 normalization of U.S.–China relations. Without that, any opinion offered is little more than noise.
The story, in brief, is this,
In 1928 the Nationalist government established itself in Nanjing. Japan’s 1931 Manchurian Incident and the 1937 Marco Polo Bridge Incident pushed China into full-scale war, during which the Nationalists and Communists formed a temporary united front. After Japan’s defeat in 1945, the Soviets entered Manchuria and handed vast quantities of captured Japanese weapons to the Chinese Communist Party, allowing the Chinese Civil War to reignite in 1946.
By 1949, the Communists had won. Mao Zedong declared the founding of the People’s Republic of China in Beijing, while Chiang Kai-shek retreated to Taiwan, continuing the Republic of China there. Both governments claimed to be the sole legitimate regime of all China. For two decades, the world largely recognized Taiwan as “China.” But in 1971 the UN transferred China’s seat from Taipei to Beijing. Japan normalized relations with the PRC in 1972, and the United States followed in 1979. Yet Washington could not simply abandon Taiwan; it was politically impossible. So Congress created the Taiwan Relations Act—neither an alliance nor formal recognition, but a legal mechanism allowing the U.S. to support Taiwan indefinitely.
And so a diplomatic “sacred zone” was born. Since 1979, U.S. policy has rested on three pillars,
Taiwan is not recognized as a sovereign state, but neither is it accepted as part of China.
The U.S. opposes any attempt by China to take Taiwan by force.
Whether the U.S. would intervene militarily is left deliberately undefined.
The entire architecture of peace in the Taiwan Strait relies on this studied vagueness. Takaichi’s remarks stomped directly onto this diplomatic landmine.
For more than seventy years, Beijing has told its domestic audience, “Japan still believes Taiwan belongs to them.” It was propaganda—but now, thanks to the prime minister’s comment, China can say, “See? We were right.” Japan has handed them a perfect narrative weapon. Diplomatically, it is difficult to imagine a worse move.
A brief aside: the prime minister used the word “battleship.” There are no battleships in active service anywhere in the world today. A battleship is a specific type of capital ship, long obsolete, its last combat deployment was in the 1991 Gulf War. For a sitting prime minister to use that word in the context of modern security policy betrays a rather worrying lack of basic military literacy.
And while the Chinese diplomat’s language was outrageous, the so-called Japanese “patriots” raging on social media may be even more dangerous to Japan’s future. They know no history, no international norms, no diplomatic logic. They shout “Be firm!” and “Don’t lose to China!” without the faintest idea of why the prime minister’s remark is destabilizing. Ignorance is not harmless, it is often the most destructive weapon a nation can wield against itself.
If I were to describe the odd discomfort I felt watching this unfold, it would be something like this, imagine a married couple having an argument. Out of nowhere, the wife’s ex-boyfriend from decades ago barges in, uninvited, and snarls at the husband, “Lay a hand on her and I’ll take you down myself.” That is the level of absurdity we are dealing with. And the unsettling part is that there are people who look at this behavior and call it “brave.” Where this situation will drift from here, I can’t help but worry.
