Miguel Afonso Caetano"On April 21, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi officially announced that Japan had lifted a decades-old ban on exporting lethal weapons. The new offer concerns at least seventeen countries as potential buyers for Japanese fighter jets, missiles, and warships.
The move came in a period of strongly rising militarism. Japan and Australia had only days before signed a $7 billion deal for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to build eleven warships for the Royal Australian Navy. That same week, Japan’s Self-Defense Forces (SDF) began participating as combatants in the US-Philippines Balikatan 2026 exercises for the first time, during which it has since tested its Type-88 surface-to-ship missile, marking the first time Japan has launched an offensive weapon abroad since the end of World War II.
Takaichi’s April 21 announcement also coincided with reports that she had sent a ritual offering to the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Japan’s war dead, including over a thousand convicted war criminals from World War II. This number includes former Prime Minister Tojo Hideki and general Matsui Iwane, who explicitly ordered his soldiers to carry out mass executions of civilians across Nanjing as the Imperial Japanese Army laid siege to the Chinese city from December 1937."
https://jacobin.com/2026/05/japan-rearmament-nationalism-military
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