Over the past decade, Japan has significantly updated its defense policy. In 2015, the government partially lifted restrictions on the exercise of collective self-defense. Since 2022, the defense budget has grown rapidly, and the Self-Defense Force has expanded its ability to project power far beyond Japan’s immediate territory. These represent significant shifts that would have been unimaginable only a few decades ago. How should we understand these developments? To what extent has Japan’s defense policy shifted from its previous course? What do these reforms mean for the U.S.–Japan Alliance and for peace and stability in the Western Pacific? What objectives is Japan seeking to achieve through these defense policy upgrades, and what challenges does it face? This talk examines these questions to provide a deeper understanding of Japan’s evolving defense posture.

Speaker:

Ryo Kiridori is a research fellow at the National Institute for Defense Studies (NIDS), which he joined in 2016. From 2018 to 2019, he was cross appointed to the Defense Ministry’s Defense Policy Bureau, where he was engaged in drafting Japan’s mid-to-long-term defense strategy called National Defense Program Guidelines (now called National Defense Strategy) as well as in various policy-level strategic dialogues, including the Japan-US Extended Deterrence Dialogue. His research interests cover security studies and foreign policy analysis. He has recently written a chapter in a book about lessons from Ukraine to Taiwan, published in 2025. He is currently working on multiple research projects,including one about security implications of the spread of precision strike capabilities in the Indo-Pacific and a research that reassesses the role of the bureaucracy in Japan’s defense policy evolution. He holds a BA in political science from the University of New Brunswick in Canada and an MSc in International Relations from London School of Economics and Political Science. He is currently a PhD candidate in political science at the University of Toronto.

Moderator:

Kuniko Ashizawa is a professorial lecturer at the Elliott School of International Affairs, George Washington University. She also teaches international relations at the School of International Service, American University. Her research interests include Japan’s foreign policy, regional institution-building in Asia, and global governance, for which she has published various academic journal articles and book chapters, including in International Studies Review, Pacific Affairs, the Pacific Review, and Journal of Peacebuilding and Development. Her book, Japan, the U.S. and Regional Institution-Building in the New Asia: When Identity Matters (Palgrave McMillan, 2013), received the 2015 Masayoshi Ohira Memorial Prize. She received her PhD in international relations at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University.