Mar 15, 2022 (CNN) - Japan has backed its condemnation of war in Ukraine with sanctions on Russian officials and oligarchs, but experts say they're not the only audience for Tokyo's outrage -- China is meant to get the message, too.
Since Moscow attacked Ukraine, commentators have drawn comparisons between Russia's actions and China's stated ambition to seek the "reunification" of Taiwan with the mainland. The "what if" scenario has not been lost on Japanese leaders.
In the first days of the invasion, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida was quick to frame the Ukraine crisis as a global issue. "This is a very serious situation which doesn't just affect Europe, but also Asia and the whole world order," he told reporters.
And the Japanese public seem to be in lockstep with his views. In a country typically more focused on domestic issues, the war is dominating news coverage. Thousands of anti-war protesters have taken to the streets of cities nationwide, and a recent poll shows that over 80% of the 1,063 people surveyed support Japan's economic sanctions against Russia.
For Japan, support for Ukraine serves a dual purpose, according to Yoko Iwama, an international relations and security expert at the National Graduate Institute of Policy Studies.
"The purpose of Japan's response is to send a message that we will be ready and we will resist if there's an invasion (of Japanese territory), that we will not allow the borders to be changed by force," said Iwama.
"We don't want a real war, the objective is political -- that China is persuaded from an aggressive act like the one that Putin has taken in the last several days and weeks."
It's against that backdrop that Japan's former prime minister, Shinzo Abe, raised a previously unthinkable suggestion during an interview three days after the Russian invasion.
Abe, still an influential figure in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, floated the idea of Japan entering a NATO-like nuclear weapons sharing program -- hosting US nuclear weapons on Japanese soil. It was a shocking proposal for country that suffered the devastating impact of the two atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki during World War II -- but one Abe says should no longer be taboo. ...continue reading
