By Karishma Vaswani

ACROSS ASIA, the reaction to Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s election triumph has been near unanimous: A stronger Japan is good for the region. Everyone, that is, except China.

Japan’s first-ever female premier secured a historic victory, handing her the strongest mandate of any leader in the country’s postwar era. The scale of this win matters far beyond Japan. Under Takaichi, Tokyo is increasingly viewed as a stabilizing force in the Indo-Pacific region — a stunning reversal for a country that once made Asia deeply wary of any resurgence in its military power. That shift is not happening because the region has forgotten the past. Rather, it’s pragmatically trying to manage the present.

Japan’s occupation of much of Southeast Asia between 1941 and 1945 was marked by severe brutality. Beijing continues to invoke this history — and its own traumatic experience — to warn against any revival of Tokyo’s military role.

But Asia’s middle powers are adapting. Two forces are driving that recalibration: A recognition that US President Donald Trump prizes self-interest and leverage over diplomacy and cooperation, and China’s increasing willingness to use coercion as a routine instrument of statecraft. As the former Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Menon Rao has argued, a more transactional US foreign policy “inevitably increases the importance of allies like Japan in providing continuity and strategic ballast in the Indo-Pacific.”

Trump’s America-First approach has left many Asian allies uneasy about his commitments on trade and defense. The US remains engaged, but that no longer comes with predictability. From India to Taiwan, governments have felt that volatility keenly. Last week, New Delhi came to an agreement on trade with Washington, but only after a bruising round of talks with the cards stacked firmly in the White House’s favor. Details are still being finalized but few doubt which side emerged as the winner.

Taipei, meanwhile, has watched anxiously as its future is discussed as leverage in US-China diplomacy ahead of a potential meeting between the US leader and President Xi Jinping. The lesson many regional capitals are drawing is that Washington’s support is conditional, and subject to seemingly fickle changes.

China is making that instinct to hedge more urgent. Whether through coercive trade measures, the harassment of vessels in the South China Sea, or the selective use of economic tools such as restrictions on tourism and critical minerals, Beijing has demonstrated how quickly it can punish behavior it dislikes.

Its sharp reaction to Takaichi’s comments last year — when she suggested that a crisis in the Taiwan Strait could directly implicate Japan’s security — underscores this reality. The fact that she hasn’t walked those comments back, despite repeatedly saying she wants stable relations with China, is telling. Beijing’s pressure has instead backfired, strengthening public support in Japan for reducing economic dependence on the world’s second-largest economy, and boosting domestic resilience on rare earths and energy. 

A more confident Tokyo complicates Beijing’s preferred regional order. For many of Asia’s middle powers, that makes Japan an appealing counterweight. South Korea is a case in point. Long skeptical of Japan’s rise because of historical enmity, Seoul has shown a noticeable shift. Takaichi’s recent “drum diplomacy” with President Lee Jae Myung was more than a viral K-pop moment. It signaled a willingness to set aside old hostilities and deepen cooperation.

This relationship will be a critical one to watch. South Korean ties with Japan have been marked by periods of close security cooperation, oscillating with sharp diplomatic freezes rooted in nationalism. But increasingly there is a shared recognition in both capitals that they need a functional partnership to manage growing pressure from China and the persistent threat posed by North Korea.

This regional calculation is also reshaping Japan’s own security debate. Defense spending is rising to record levels, and the once-taboo discussion of militarization is moving into the mainstream. A 2025 Cabinet Office survey found that 45.2% of respondents now believe the Self-Defense Forces’ size and capabilities should be strengthened. That’s up from 42% in 2022, the last time the survey was conducted. China’s military power and activities in the region were cited as a key reason for the sentiment.

Takaichi now faces both opportunity and risk as she considers revisiting sensitive constitutional questions. She has long pushed for reform of the pacifist constitution, which was imposed by the US after World War II and never amended — but she will have to walk a fine line. Moving too cautiously would undercut her mandate, but moving too boldly could alarm neighbors. It would also feed into Beijing’s narrative that Japan’s military threat has merely been dormant.

For now, the wind is at her back. Her victory gives Tokyo rare political stability to play a larger part in a region squeezed between American volatility and mounting Chinese pressure. For much of Asia, that balance is not just welcome — it is increasingly essential. For China, that is precisely the problem.

BLOOMBERG OPINION