Japan PM Fumio Kishida tries to move the dial towards militarism

By exaggerating the danger,Fumio Kishida is creating a public more receptive to building a militarily stronger Japan. Picture: AFP

The idea of North Korean rockets flying overhead is an alarming one, and when an intermediate range missile passed over northern Japan the alarm was duly raised.

Train services were halted, fishermen stayed in port, and phones buzzed with the advice to move underground or inside. In terms of the risk to life and property the response was a near-hysterical overreaction, and arguably an act of political opportunism by Fumio Kishida, the prime minister, and his government.

North Korea has test fired about 40 missiles this year, on 20 separate occasions. None has carried a warhead, and this was one of the least dangerous. When it passed above Japan it was outside earth’s atmosphere. Its apogee was about 620 miles (1,000km) above Japan - the distance from London to the Shetland Islands.

The missiles “passed over” only in the way the International Space Station, and countless satellites, pass over the countries below them. Even if it had failed, and fallen to earth, the chances of a 50ft metal tube causing injury on 2,900-mile journey across mostly empty ocean were vanishingly small.

If Kim Jong-un wants to attack Japan, he has a well-tested arsenal of missiles far better suited to the job. But such a pre-emptive attack would be suicidal, guaranteeing his destruction in a counter-attack by Japan’s great ally, the US.

People walk past a television screen showing a news broadcast with file footage of a North Korean missile test, at a railway station in Seoul on October 4, 2022. Picture: AFP

Why, then, did Kishida choose to scare his people? The truth is that inspiring insecurity suits the Liberal Democratic Party, which wants to revise the pacifist principles that have underpinned Japanese security since 1945. New laws have been passed to allow Japan to send forces overseas, and to fight alongside and in defence of its allies.

It would be too much to suggest that the government welcomes North Korean rockets. But by exaggerating the danger, Kishida is creating a public more receptive to building a militarily stronger Japan.

The Times