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Beijing's Predictable Anger

Reaction from China was swift and sharp. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Lin Jian told a press briefing in Beijing on Tuesday that Japan was "walking the road of militarism in broad daylight" and warned that Tokyo's arms exports "will further destabilize the Asia-Pacific region." Chinese state media ran commentaries comparing the Takaichi government to the militarist administrations of the 1930s — rhetoric that Japanese officials dismissed as "predictable and propagandistic."

South Korea, which has long harbored its own concerns about Japanese rearmament while simultaneously pursuing a massive defense-export drive of its own, offered a more measured response, with the foreign ministry saying only that Seoul would "watch closely how the new rules are implemented."

What It Means For Americans

The practical consequences for the United States begin in the shipyards and the fighter-jet assembly lines. A commercially active Japanese defense industry eases the burden on Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Boeing and General Dynamics at a moment when the U.S. industrial base is stretched thinner than it has been in a generation. It also gives American diplomats a new tool for strengthening allies in the Philippines, Vietnam and beyond, where Japanese-made frigates or missile systems could close capability gaps without waiting years for American production slots to open.

For the broader strategic picture, Tuesday's decision caps a decade-long transformation that began when the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reinterpreted Japan's pacifist constitution to permit collective self-defense. Successive governments have steadily chipped away at the remaining constraints — raising the defense budget, developing long-range strike capability, building amphibious units, and now, at last, opening the export door.

Japan has not yet sent a single missile abroad under the new rules. It almost certainly will, and soon. When it does, the country that once swore off all offensive military activity in the ashes of 1945 will have completed one of the most remarkable defense-policy reversals of the post-war era — not with a bang, but with a Cabinet signature on a Tuesday afternoon in Tokyo.