Former Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso (2008-2009 and Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Finance from 2012-2021, now the LDP Vice President) is in Taiwan—the highest-level Japanese official to visit since Tokyo severed diplomatic ties with Taipei in 1972—where he blustered that China is threatening war and that Japan would join the U.S. in defending the island.
“The environment in Japan and Taiwan has changed substantially,” Aso said during a livestreamed keynote speech at the Ketagalan Forum security dialogue, as covered by Japan Times. “I think that although we are now in a period of peace ... we are gradually tilting toward a time of emergency,” he said, pointing to military exercises by China around Taiwan last August and in April.
Not sparing words of war, Aso said: “I believe that now is the time for Japan, Taiwan, the United States and other like-minded nations to be prepared to put into action a strong deterrent. That’s the determination to fight.”
“Japan, as a very close neighbor to Taiwan, I think we should be the first to express our attitude and also to make that message clear in the international community, including China,” he said.
This comes after Japan declared its transformation to a far more militarist orientation in security documents issued last year and in its annual White Paper released in July, and Prime Minister Kishida’s attendance at the July NATO Summit in Vilnius, where “Global NATO” expansion into Asia was essentially adopted.
Aso met with President Tsai Ing-wen and other officials.
