Fumio Kishida was on Monday sworn in as Japan’s 100th prime minister. In the past few years, relations between Taiwan and Japan have improved considerably, not only due to support from former Japanese prime ministers Shinzo Abe and Yoshihide Suga, whom Kishida is replacing, but also because of reciprocal support and donations from the citizens of both nations.
Abe, with his emphasis on a free and open Indo-Pacific and promotion of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, and Suga, who emphasized the importance of reducing tensions in the Taiwan Strait following his April summit with US President Joe Biden, both recognized the importance of Taiwan to Japan’s national security in the face of China’s increasing regional ambitions.
Taiwan’s national security is significantly bolstered by Japan’s support, although it would benefit greatly from a formal mutual security agreement between Taipei and Tokyo. With that being unlikely in the foreseeable future, Taiwan can hope for continuity in Japan’s foreign and national security policy orientations, and there is good reason to believe Kishida can provide that.
Kishida was Japan’s longest-serving post-World War II minister of foreign affairs. He served in Abe’s government from 2012 to 2017, before a brief stint as defense minister. He has good relations with diplomats at the highest level, including in the US and Russia, and even though he was defeated by Suga to take over from Abe in September last year, the Japanese media had considered him to be Abe’s heir apparent.
Kishida’s Cabinet picks might in part be the result of deals, rewards and political snubs between different factions in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), but they can also reveal much about the foreign relations and national defense orientation Kishida wants his government to take.
Toshimitsu Motegi remains as foreign minister, a position he has held since the end of Abe’s second administration, while Nobuo Kishi stays as defense minister. Kishi is a member of the powerful Hosoda faction, which is effectively led by Abe, and also happens to be Abe’s brother. Under Suga’s tenure, Kishi linked Taiwan’s security to Japan’s.
Hirozaku Matsuno, another member of the Hosoda faction, is to be Kishida’s chief Cabinet secretary, while Taro Aso, who served as Abe’s deputy prime minister from 2012 to last year, and who has said that Japan would come to Taiwan’s aid if attacked by China, remains in the government, albeit not in his previous position: He has been made LDP vice president, essentially an honorary, pre-retirement position.
Despite these signs of continuity, China is still Japan’s largest trading partner, and an increasingly dominant regional military power: Kishida will be looking to maintain good relations with Beijing.
In 2016, the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper) asked Kishi if Taiwan-Japan relations might include legislation similar to the US’ Taiwan Relations Act. He said that the government had no such plans, but that the Diet, Japan’s legislature, had done research on the possibility.
In the same interview, he also linked improving ties to Taiwan lifting its ban on imports of food products from prefectures affected by the 2011 Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant disaster.
The government has developed closer ties with Tokyo, but it could do more. The Fukushima nuclear disaster was a decade ago, and yet Taiwan remains one of only five places in the world — including China, Hong Kong, Macau and South Korea — that retains a ban on these imports, more due to political considerations and public pressure than based on international synchronization and scientific data.
If the government wants Tokyo to be more responsive to the idea of formalizing mutual security arrangements, it needs to show more backbone in lifting the ban on Japanese food imports from the specified areas, even if just as a show of goodwill.
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