DECEMBER 19 — As 2025 draws to an end, Japan approaches another solemn milestone: eighty years since the conclusion of the Second World War.
Inevitably, strategic commentary gravitates toward a familiar theme — the US-Japan Security Treaty.
For decades, outside observers have explained Japan almost entirely through the prism of an American security umbrella, as though military protection alone explains Japan’s stability, prosperity, or diplomatic tone.
That has always been a narrow reading.
The United States holds similar defence treaties with South Korea, Australia, and the Philippines, and at one point with Thailand.
Yet none of these alliances have produced Japan’s unique blend of strategic predictability, institutional discipline, and civic restraint. A treaty may create deterrence, but it does not create behaviour. It cannot manufacture legal culture, public trust, or the internalisation of order.
Japan’s identity cannot be reduced to a derivative of American hard power. It grew into a distinctive post-war actor because its institutions worked at home.
Japan has never been a helpless ward of the US strategy. It retained defence capability, a maritime posture, and industrial capacity that could have supported a much more assertive military path had Japan chosen to take it. Instead, Japan placed all instruments of force under constitutional procedure, public debate, and judicial oversight.
In the Cold War and after, Japan modernised without abandoning restraint. Hard power existed — but it did not dominate national psychology.
The Self-Defense Force became a disciplined, legally bounded force rather than a performative symbol. Defence procurement focused on maritime awareness and layered protection, not expeditionary projection. The point was never disarmament. The point was calibrated legality.
This restraint became political culture.
Japan rebuilt legitimacy through predictable institutions, technological excellence, and a manufacturing base that generated civilian trust.
Public order was not enforced through intimidation. It was lived. Tokyo became a megacity without urban breakdown. Kyoto retained heritage without turning it into grievance. Hiroshima remembered catastrophe without weaponising memory.
Such behaviour is not the outcome of an alliance. It is the product of internal choices.
If the US alliance were sufficient logic, then every American partner would display the same post-war temperament. South Korea, though resilient, remains consumed by existential insecurity.
The Philippines oscillates between populism and institutional fragility.
Australia is stable, yet its strategic posture has grown more openly confrontational in recent years.
Japan, in contrast, spent decades normalising responsibility, rather than dramatising it. That is why its soft power endures. Not surprisingly Japan is against all forms of violent extremism.
Soft power is not a branding campaign. It is not nostalgia for anime or cuisine. At its highest register, it is civilisational order: cities that function without coercion, public services that do not collapse, a judiciary that does not bend, and rules that are applied consistently. This durability was achieved without ideological evangelism. Japan did not export doctrine. It exported confidence through performance.
This does not mean Japanese politics is uniformly moderate. Like all democracies, Japan has its hawkish and right-leaning strands.
Some movements, such as Sanseidō, promote restrictive immigration, cultural gatekeeping, and a belief that Japan’s challenges — including demographic decline — should be addressed by limiting the presence of outsiders. These views reflect a layer of national self-perception, not a state doctrine. They draw energy from anxieties common across the OECD: labour shortages, ageing populations, and a fear that cohesion may erode.
But they do not overturn the foundations of Japanese governance. The existence of a hawkish fringe demonstrates political plurality. It does not signal the abandonment of restraint. Even when right-leaning rhetoric calls for sharper identity boundaries, policy continues to move through committees, judicial review, constitutional interpretation, and multi-party competition. The rule of law still structures decision-making.
This is why Japan’s behaviour, even now, remains sober.
Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Japan began considering a gradual increase in defence spending toward 2 per cent of GDP. Critics framed this as a militaristic pivot. In reality, the deliberations proceeded through budgetary discipline, public justification, and bureaucratic scrutiny.
Japan recognised geopolitical pressure, but responded cautiously — not ideologically.
Even during the most intense phases of the Cold War, Japan did not use the presence of capability to pursue coercive leverage. It did not turn military potential into national identity. It did not claim entitlement through wartime nostalgia. Instead, it embedded regret into institutional behaviour. That alone distinguishes Japan from the revisionist temptations visible elsewhere in Eurasia.
Asia today contains anxieties that reward theatrical power. South-east Asia confronts illicit flows, cyber scams, kidnapping syndicates, and dirty finance—networks that benefit from weak enforcement. Some governments tolerate these ecosystems as political instruments. Japan does not. Crime online and crime offline are treated with the same legal seriousness. There are no loopholes for digital offences. This is a quiet contribution to regional security.
North-east Asia faces nuclear brinkmanship, territorial grievance, and demographic tension. Yet Japan has resisted emotional escalation. It reassures its neighbours through predictability. It does not seek dominance. It seeks stability.
Even now, as US-China rivalry hardens and Asia is pushed toward binary alignments, Japan remains committed to process. Those who demand harder postures misunderstand Japan’s achievement. Power in Japan is not measured by demonstration. It is measured by control. Influence is not earned through intimidation. It is earned by showing society that rules do not bend simply because circumstances do.
Eighty years after the war, Japan’s strategic character remains anchored in legalism rather than bravado. It remembers the cost of collapse. It recalls the consequences of excess. And it continues to prove that a major industrial state can carry military capacity without theatrical nationalism.
Japan is not defined by an alliance. Nor is it defined by its hawkish fringes. Its identity rests on discipline: a belief that order should be lawful, that memory should temper ambition, and that strength should never outrun legitimacy.
That quiet restraint may be the most reassuring force in the Indo-Pacific — a region that desperately needs predictability more than posturing.
* Phar Kim Beng is a professor of Asean Studies and director at the Institute of International and Asean Studies, International Islamic University of Malaysia.
** This is the personal opinion of the writer or publication and does not necessarily represent the views of Malay Mail.
