Japan's decision to drastically increase its defense budget and re-militarize coincides with its new foreign policy goals of confronting China over disputed islands.

After World War II, it seemed unlikely that Japan would ever return to its prior state as a military power, largely due to article 9 of its post-war constitution that "forever [renounced] war as a sovereign right of the nation." Following the Allied occupation of the country and near complete disarmament, Japan was all but forced to align itself to US interests as it came to rely on the American military almost exclusively for its defense. To this day, the US State Department refers to the American-Japanese as relationship "the cornerstone of US security interests in Asia and […] fundamental to regional stability and prosperity." Though the US has pushed Japan to re-militarize on more than one occasion, such as the Korean War, Japan continued, for much of the last sixty years, to restrict military spending to about 1% of its gross national product.

Yet, everything began to change when Junichiro Koizumi assumed the office of President in 2001. Koizumi, likely influenced by the hawkish Bush administration, approved the expansion of the Japan Self-Defense Forces, even allowing them to operate outside of the country. In 2004, Koizumi sent a sizeable number of forces to assist the US occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan. Then, in 2007, he upgraded the Japan Defense Agency to ministry status, creating the Japanese Ministry of Defense. However, Koizumi's efforts pale in comparison to those of Japan's current prime minister, Shinzo Abe. Abe, by 2015, had transformed Japan's Defense spending, making its defense budget the 7th largest in the world despite the fact that they still have no "formal" military. That same year, Abe led the charge to essentially repeal the pacifist clause of the constitution in order to allow Japanese troops to fight more easily in overseas conflicts, even if Japan itself is not threatened. The measure came packaged with 10 other security bills, which were widely opposed by the Japanese people. However, that didn't stop Abe from forcing them through parliament, a move which sparked fist fights and general chaos among legislators. A member of Japan's Democratic party said, "If bills can be passed in a violent way like that, then our country's democracy is dead."