Does the Ukraine war herald a new era for Japan’s security policy?

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has swiftly changed the security landscape of Europe.

NATO has stepped up troop deployments to member states in Eastern Europe. Sweden and Finland are poised to apply for NATO membership, a step previously opposed and now embraced by their publics. And in the most dramatic transformation, Germany’s new chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has announced once-unthinkable investments in German military capabilities and shipments of arms to Ukraine. He had good reason to call Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a zeitenwende — a watershed moment and the end of an era.

However, where the war in Ukraine has led European publics to dramatically revise not just their perceptions but their policies, it’s not clear than the Japanese public is as ready to undertake such wholesale revisions.