Why Japan’s 3 Upcoming Security Documents Are So Important

The government of Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio plans to revise the nation’s most important defense and diplomacy documents in mid-December in reaction to what he described as an “increasingly severe security environment surrounding Japan.”

Specifically, the Kishida administration will update the nation’s three key security documents – the National Security Strategy (NSS), the National Defense Program Guidelines (NDPG), and the Medium-Term Defense Program (MTDP) – which all need to be approved by both the National Security Council and the Cabinet.

To understand the essence of Japan's security policy in the post-war era as well as in the future, we need to understand these documents.

First, what are these three documents?

The NSS is the basic policy for national security centered on foreign and defense policies, and is positioned at the top of the three documents. Below that, there is the NDPG, which will outline Japan’s military policies – including defense spending and exports – over the next decade by stipulating the level of defense capabilities that should be maintained. At the bottom, there is the MTDP, which shows the defense equipment to be purchased and the overall spending for the next five years. Japan’s annual defense budget is decided based on these three documents.

Today, these three security documents act as a “three-piece set,” but that was not always the case. The NDPG was established in 1976 during the Miki Takeo administration. Nine years later, in 1985, the first MTDP was established during the Nakasone Yasuhiro administration. As hard as it is to believe, the very first NSS was formulated in 2013 during the second Abe Shinzo administration. In other words, Japan’s most important national security document, which is supposed to cover the whole of national security issues, was established last, just nine years ago.

There are two major reasons for that. First, Japan did not need its own NSS for decades after World War II because it was protected by the United States under the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty. Moreover, any explicit national security strategy could have been labeled as “reviving militarism” by South Korea, China, and other countries. Japan avoided such criticism by sticking to the nation’s pacifist constitution and its defense-only policy.

Second, both the NDPG and the MTDP were originally introduced mainly for the purpose of slowing the growth of defense spending during the post-war period, in keeping with Japan’s identify as a pacifist nation, according to Shimada Kazuhisa, a special adviser to the Cabinet and a former vice minister of the Ministry of Defense and secretary to late Abe for about six and a half years in the second Abe administration.

Speaking at the Japan National Press Club on November 7, Shimada pointed out that as an example of such cost-containment efforts, the “Basic Defense Force” concept, which was introduced by the first NDPG, espouses the idea that Japan should maintain the minimum necessary basic defense forces, rather than preparing to directly counter a military threat.

He also pointed out the first MTDP was introduced to put a new cap on increases in defense expenses in place of breaking the 1 percent of GDP limit on Japanese defense spending.

“The main purpose of the NDPG and the MTDP was originally to put a brake on increase in defense spending, so in order to fundamentally reinforce defense capabilities, there are arguments we should even change the names of those documents, let alone the content of the defense policies,” Shimada said.

As Shimada said, Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in April proposed the NDPG should be developed with a focus on counter-threat defense strategies. It specifically called for formulating a new “National Defense Strategy,” which is similar in content to the U.S. National Military Strategy. The LDP also proposed to formulate a “Defense Buildup Plan” by replacing the current MTDP.

In any case, most notably, this is the first time in the history that the three documents are being revised at the same time. Regardless of what the documents end up being called, Japan will adopt a more vigorous stance of rapidly building up its defense capability rather than adopting its previous reactive stance.