Japan's record defense budget plan sparks public concern

TOKYO -- The Japanese government has recently approved a draft budget for fiscal 2026, with defense spending set at about 9.04 trillion yen (about $58 billion), marking a new record high and sparking public concern.

An editorial published on Saturday by Japan's Shimbun Akahata noted that the country's defense budget stood at 5.4 trillion yen in fiscal 2022 and has surged by 3.6 trillion yen in just four years. The newspaper said the latest figure is comparable to the 3.5 trillion yen allocated for measures to address the declining birthrate and the 3.8 trillion yen earmarked for nursing care payments in the budget proposal, warning that rising military spending will inevitably squeeze livelihood-related expenditures, which makes it a budget of "military prosperity at the expense of people's livelihoods."

The Ryukyu Shimpo said in an editorial on Saturday that the armament plans reflected in the new fiscal year's defense budget seriously deviate from Japan's "exclusively defense-oriented" policy and will aggravate military tensions.

Atsushi Koketsu, professor emeritus at Yamaguchi University, told Xinhua that the budget proposal is deeply disappointing, as it fails to give sufficient consideration to people's livelihood and stability while significantly increasing defense spending.

For decades, Japan capped its annual defense budget at around 1 percent of GDP, roughly 5 trillion yen, reflecting its postwar pacifist stance under the war-renouncing Constitution. But the government, despite widespread opposition, set a goal in 2022 of raising total defense outlays to about 43 trillion yen from fiscal 2023 through 2027 and hiking defense-related spending to 2 percent of GDP by fiscal 2027.

Since fiscal 2023, Japan's annual defense budget has successively exceeded 6 trillion yen, 7 trillion yen, 8 trillion yen, and 9 trillion yen. (1 Japanese yen equals about 0.006 USD)