Japan's defense spending has been rising in recent years amid China's increased maritime assertiveness and the growing threat of North Korea's nuclear weapons and ballistic missile development. The ¥97.7 trillion government budget for fiscal 2018 earmarked a record ¥5.19 trillion for defense, a 1.3 percent rise from the current year for the sixth year-on-year increase in a row. A supplementary budget for fiscal 2017 adopted by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Cabinet late last month along with the fiscal 2018 annual budget featured ¥234.5 billion in extra defense-related spending.
Measures need to be taken to cope with the changing security environment surrounding Japan. Amid the nation's tight fiscal conditions, however, defense spending must still be controlled and prioritized. Close scrutiny should be made on the cost of spending for new items versus their effectiveness in defending the nation — which also needs to be considered in Japan's broader diplomatic strategy as well as division of roles with the United States under the bilateral security alliance. Such scrutiny will be all the more important as pressure builds for further increases in defense expenditures in coming years.
Upon tapping Itsunori Onodera as defense minister in a Cabinet reshuffle in August, Abe instructed him to review the National Defense Program Guidelines adopted in 2013 to set the course for a defense buildup in the coming decade. Recently, the prime minister said his government, in the review to begin in full early next year, would determine "what defense capabilities we should truly have in order to protect our people, rather than simply expanding traditional ones." While a ceiling was placed on defense spending for fiscal 2018 under the Medium-term Defense Program covering the five years from 2014, the ceiling on expenditures is expected to be raised further in the next five-year program beginning in fiscal 2019 under the new guideline.