Examines Japanese security policy under Abe, identifies the constants and constraints that frame that policy, and attempts to project where Japan will go in the near-term future.

Executive Summary
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is determined to restore the shine to Japan and ensure that it remains a ‘first-tier’ country. Central to that objective are aggressive diplomacy and a forward-leaning security policy and posture. The first three years of his second administration have been marked by a series of initiatives to that end: the creation of a National Security Council, the production of a National Security Strategy, a state secrecy law, changes to arms exports and overseas development assistance policies, new National Defense Program Guidelines, a new Mid-Term Defense Plan, and new US–Japan Defense Guidelines.

While all these programs are valuable and welcome, Japanese security policy is rightfully characterised more as continuity than as change. The Abe government has dramatically accelerated Japan’s adaptation to the evolution in security challenges, but those efforts are still an adaptation and an evolutionary process. Worryingly, even those successes are likely to prove temporary—and his overarching goal of Japanese renewal will remain out of reach—if his Abenomics economic program doesn’t succeed. Two problems in particular threaten Abe’s objectives. First, there are structural problems in the Japanese economy, its demographic trajectory in particular. The second is the increasingly inward focus of the Japanese public. Two ‘lost decades’ have downsized Japanese horizons: there’s not only a diminishing inclination to compete with China but a reluctance to embrace the ambition that characterised two generations of postwar Japanese. It’s doubtful whether most Japanese share their government’s ambitions and whether they are prepared to make the adjustments and sacrifices necessary to achieve and maintain that status. The Abe administration could well be ‘Peak Japan’.

While the ultimate responsibility for the success of Abe’s agenda rests on the shoulders of his government and the public, Japan’s partners must try to counter the tendency among Japanese to step back or disengage. Tokyo must be drawn out, given a stake in regional outcomes and pushed to play as prominent a security role as possible. This necessitates the striking of a balance between the push for contributions and accepting (or at least acknowledging) the inclination to focus inwards. One important way to accomplish this objective is to conceptualise security broadly and to identify ways for Japan to contribute that don’t focus on purely military means. Japan has championed comprehensive security for over three decades; this should provide a framework for efforts that are congenial to Japanese resources, capabilities and thinking. Calibrating this tension is difficult but essential. Japan must be pushed to do more even while its partners remain conscious of the domestic circumstances that create resistance to such initiatives.

Australia can play a key role in this effort. Canberra has emerged as Tokyo’s preferred security partner (after the US). The two governments have overcome a bitter and difficult history to forge a ‘special strategic partnership’ that reflects shared values and interests and includes an expanding institutional infrastructure with regular meetings of the two top leaderships, an array of security instruments and coordination with their alliance partner, the US.Australia should continue to press Japan to work with it across a spectrum of security and foreign policy issues. There should be diplomatic coordination bilaterally and in regional and international forums; of special importance is outreach to third parties throughout East Asia to press for respect for the rule of law, human dignity and the peaceful resolution of disputes. They should be planning, along with the US, for various regional contingencies. The two militaries should be expanding their cooperation, including joint exercises.