Japan and Geopolitics: China and the Russian Federation
Kanako Mita, Sawako Utsumi, and Lee Jay Walker
Modern Tokyo Times
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi of Japan confronts a formidable convergence of domestic economic pressures and external geopolitical challenges. Domestically, Japan continues to wrestle with structural problems accumulated over decades: an immense public debt burden, a persistently weak yen, a declining birthrate, rapid demographic aging, growing dementia-related care demands, rising living costs, immigration sensitivities, and enduring economic inertia. These pressures inevitably constrain Tokyo’s diplomatic bandwidth and influence its strategic calculations.
Externally, however, Japan faces an even more consequential challenge: navigating an increasingly fluid and competitive Northeast Asian order. Relations with China and the Russian Federation therefore require strategic recalibration rather than ideological rigidity. For Tokyo, geography remains destiny. Russia, China, North Korea, and the wider Pacific are not distant geopolitical theaters — they are part of Japan’s immediate strategic environment.
Russia: Strategic Realism over Rhetoric
Under the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, whom Takaichi deeply admired, Japan pursued a pragmatic and comparatively cordial relationship with President Vladimir Putin. Abe understood a fundamental principle of geopolitics: nations cannot choose their neighbors. Russia’s immense territory stretches across the northern Pacific and directly borders Japan’s strategic environment, while Moscow remains a major military, energy, and diplomatic power across Eurasia.
Abe’s approach was neither naïve nor ideological. It was rooted in strategic realism. He recognized that maintaining dialogue with Moscow could provide Japan with diplomatic space at a time when the regional balance was becoming increasingly complicated by the rise of China, North Korea’s nuclear and missile programs, and intensifying great-power competition.
Against this backdrop, there is a compelling strategic case for Prime Minister Takaichi to moderate unnecessarily confrontational rhetoric toward Russia and preserve channels for diplomatic engagement. This would not mean abandoning Japan’s alliances or principles. Rather, it would acknowledge that Japanese national interests are best served when Tokyo retains the ability to communicate with every major power shaping Northeast Asia.
The Russia question is particularly important because the geopolitical environment has changed dramatically. The war in Ukraine has transformed relations between Moscow and the West, while simultaneously accelerating Russia’s strategic movement toward China, North Korea, India, and other non-Western powers. The result is not the isolation of Russia but a profound restructuring of Eurasian geopolitics.
For Japan, this matters enormously.
Russia’s expanding military relationship with North Korea is particularly significant. Moscow’s growing cooperation with Pyongyang has the potential to strengthen North Korea’s military capabilities, while creating a more complicated security environment for Japan and South Korea. Consequently, Tokyo has a direct interest in understanding—and where possible influencing—the evolving Russia–North Korea relationship rather than simply viewing Moscow through the prism of the European conflict.
The same applies to China. Russia and China have developed an increasingly consequential strategic partnership, creating a geopolitical reality that Japan cannot afford to ignore. If Moscow and Beijing move closer, Tokyo’s ability to maintain strategic flexibility becomes even more important. A Japan that has diplomatic channels with Moscow possesses greater room for manoeuvre than a Japan that allows relations with Russia to deteriorate into permanent hostility.
Energy security represents another dimension.
Russia possesses enormous reserves of oil, natural gas, coal and other strategic resources, while Japan remains heavily dependent upon imported energy. Geography makes the Russian Far East and the northern Pacific particularly relevant to Tokyo’s long-term calculations. Even when political relations are strained, energy geography does not disappear.
The same principle applies to the Northern Territories/Kuril Islands dispute. The territorial disagreement between Tokyo and Moscow remains deeply sensitive, but precisely because the dispute has endured for decades, diplomacy should not be abandoned. Dialogue does not require surrendering Japan’s territorial position. On the contrary, sustained diplomatic engagement provides the only realistic mechanism through which difficult territorial questions can eventually be managed.
Japan therefore needs to distinguish between strategic disagreement and diplomatic isolation. For the former is inevitable between states with competing interests. However, the latter can become dangerous.
Russia’s continuing influence across Central Asia, its expanding relationships throughout Asia, its cooperation with China and North Korea, and its enormous geographical presence across Eurasia mean that Moscow will remain an important actor in Japan’s strategic calculations irrespective of Tokyo’s preferences.
Accordingly, Japan–Russia engagement should not be regarded as an indulgence or concession. It is a component of strategic statecraft.
A recalibrated relationship would not require Tokyo to abandon its alliance with the United States, nor would it require Japan to endorse Russian policies. It would simply recognize that strategic autonomy begins with maintaining diplomatic options.
China: Stability Through Restraint and Reciprocity
Japan’s relationship with China presents its own persistent challenges, most notably concerning Taiwan, the East China Sea, maritime security, and the broader regional balance of power.
Beijing’s increasingly coercive rhetoric and military signaling under President Xi Jinping have understandably heightened anxiety across East Asia. Such intimidation, however, is ultimately counterproductive. It risks hardening Japanese public opinion, strengthening security cooperation among regional states, and accelerating the very balancing behavior that Beijing seeks to prevent.
At the same time, Japan must balance deterrence with restraint.
Listening to China’s strategic concerns does not require abandoning democratic Taiwan. Nor does diplomatic engagement mean accepting coercion. Rather, it requires measured diplomacy, military communication, confidence-building measures, and a recognition that miscalculation between Tokyo and Beijing could have consequences extending far beyond either country.
Japan would therefore be well served by avoiding any perception of automatic involvement in a potential cross-Strait conflict while maintaining its own defensive capabilities and alliance commitments. China, for its part, should pursue de-escalatory rhetoric and demonstrate greater willingness to reduce military pressure around Taiwan and disputed maritime areas.
History offers a useful precedent. The earlier status quo across the Taiwan Strait facilitated extensive trade, investment, tourism, and cultural exchange between China and Taiwan. Whatever its imperfections, that relative stability demonstrated that economic interdependence and political ambiguity can sometimes provide greater security than perpetual confrontation.
Importantly, singling out Prime Minister Takaichi ignores the broader continuity of Japanese strategic policy. Tokyo’s concerns regarding China are not simply the product of one administration or one political figure. They reflect long-term developments involving maritime security, Taiwan, North Korea, territorial disputes, and the changing balance of power in East Asia.
If China genuinely seeks regional stability, it would benefit from engaging Japan directly, calmly, and maturely. Strategic intimidation only deepens mistrust and encourages Japan to strengthen its security relationships with the United States, Australia, India, South Korea, and other regional partners.
Constructive diplomacy, rooted in reciprocity, remains the only credible means of preventing further strategic deterioration.
Moreover, China must also recognize that its conduct across the South China Sea and its territorial disputes with several Southeast Asian states contribute to wider regional anxiety. Japan cannot be held responsible for the deepening political divide between Beijing and Taipei — a dynamic shaped primarily by China’s own policies toward Taiwan.
Overall: Pragmatism as Statecraft
There is little doubt that China and Japan would both benefit from a more stable relationship. East Asia’s two largest economies possess enormous economic weight, and greater predictability between Tokyo and Beijing would strengthen regional trade, investment, supply chains, and broader economic security.
Yet alongside the China question lies another reality that Japan cannot afford to overlook: Russia remains a major Northeast Asian power.
Moscow’s geographical proximity to Japan, its military presence in the Far East, its relationship with North Korea, its increasingly close strategic partnership with China, its influence across Eurasia, and its vast energy resources ensure that Russia will remain part of Japan’s strategic equation.
This is precisely why Tokyo should preserve diplomatic space with Moscow.
Japan does not have to choose between Washington and Moscow. Nor does it have to choose between deterrence and diplomacy. A mature foreign policy can pursue both.
The strategic objective should be balanced engagement: maintaining the US alliance while preserving communication with Russia; deterring Chinese coercion while avoiding unnecessary escalation; strengthening Japan’s defenses while keeping diplomatic channels open; and protecting national interests without becoming trapped by the geopolitical agendas of larger powers.
In an era increasingly defined by multipolarity, the greatest danger for Japan may not be engagement with difficult powers, but the loss of strategic flexibility.
The lesson of Shinzo Abe’s diplomacy remains relevant: geography cannot be sanctioned, borders cannot be relocated, and major powers cannot simply be wished away.
For Japan, realism therefore demands dialogue.
Tokyo’s strength will ultimately lie not in rigid alignment, but in balanced engagement — anchored in national interest, sustained by diplomacy, and guided by the enduring realities of geography.
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