Japan’s record ¥122.3 trillion budget passed on 7 April. Domestic media are busy picking ‘Takaichi stocks’ in defence and semiconductors. But the financial statements of the supposed beneficiaries tell a different story – and the budget’s largest single outflow goes not to growth investment but to debt service, enriching the banks and life insurers who underwrite it.
In 1274, a Mongol-Korean invasion force landed at Hakata Bay in northern Kyushu. Japan’s samurai, trained for single combat, were routed by massed formations wielding gunpowder weapons they had never seen. A storm forced the invaders to withdraw, but the lesson was plain: the existing military model would not survive a second attempt. The Kamakura shogunate spent the next seven years preparing. It built a 20km stone seawall along Hakata Bay, developed small-boat night-raiding tactics and established Japan’s first permanent coastal defence force. When a far larger invasion arrived in 1281, the seawall held. The Mongol fleet sat offshore for weeks, unable to land. Then a typhoon struck and finished what Japanese preparation had started. ...
Japan has the one capability the Hormuz coalition lacks most. The legal architecture exists. The existential case is overwhelming. The only variable is political will.