Japan: The Reluctant Cyberpower
Japan’s cyberdefenses remain underdeveloped compared to the country’s great reliance on information and communications technology. Despite Japan’s initial slow response to the security challenges emerging from cyberspace, this paper posits that cybersecurity under the administration of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has moved to the core of the country’s national security policy. The 2020 Olympics Games are a major catalyst for this.
Over the last two years the Japanese government has indeed laid the structural and legal foundations for becoming a serious player in cyberspace. That effort, however, remains underfunded and is slowed by overly complicated intergovernmental coordination processes and stovepiping within the government.
While Japan remains a reluctant cyberpower with a decidedly defensive outlook and a particularly change-resistant bureaucracy, plagued by vertical compartmentalization, recent initiatives and policies have made it clear that the country is moving in the direction of potentially becoming one of Asia’s more advanced cyberpowers in the not-too-distant future.
This paper first outlines an analytical framework used to evaluate Japan’s current standing and progress as a cyberpower: from whole of government (WoG) to whole of nation (WoN) and whole of system (WoS). The following three sections discuss in detail the evolutionary stages in the development of Japan’s national cybersecurity strategy. The last section deals with the Japan Self-Defense Forces’ changing role in cyberspace and how it is slowly embracing a more militarized response to state-sponsored cyberthreats.
The administration of Prime Minister Abe has been careful not to abandon the Japan Self-Defense Forces’ defensive posture in cyberspace and has not indicated that it will develop offensive cyberwar capabilities. This, however, may change should the new US administration abandon the United States’ historic solid defense commitment to Japan. In that respect, Japan’s deepening of engagement with like-minded countries will assume even greater importance over the next four years.
This page contains only a summary of our work. If you would like to have access to all the information from our research on the subject, you can download the full version in PDF format.
Japan: The Reluctant Cyberpower
Center for Asian Studies
Asia is a nerve center for multiple global economic, political and security challenges. The Center for Asian Studies provides documented expertise and a platform for discussion on Asian issues to accompany decision makers and explain and contextualize developments in the region for the sake of a larger public dialogue.
The Center's research is organized along two major axes: relations between Asia's major powers and the rest of the world; and internal economic and social dynamics of Asian countries. The Center's research focuses primarily on China, Japan, India, Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific, but also covers Southeast Asia, the Korean peninsula and the Pacific Islands.
The Centre for Asian Studies maintains close institutional links with counterpart research institutes in Europe and Asia, and its researchers regularly carry out fieldwork in the region.
The Center organizes closed-door roundtables, expert-level seminars and a number of public events, including an Annual Conference, that welcome experts from Asia, Europe and the United States. The work of Center’s researchers, as well as that of their partners, is regularly published in the Center’s electronic journal Asie.Visions.
China’s Climate Leadership after Hormuz: How Should Europe Adjust?
The effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz in early 2026 offered an unplanned stress test of China’s approach to energy security, and China passed it far better than most expected. The episode demonstrated that the underlying risk of supply disruption is real, while validating a preference for resilience and resource security that has long underpinned Chinese energy and climate policy and has now been reinforced under the banner of building an “energy powerhouse.”
China as an ambivalent supporter of the WTO and the multilateral trading system
Amid rising trade tensions between Europe and China and broader uncertainty in the international rules-based trade regime, Beijing has worked to preserve and bolster the multilateral trading system while at the same time failing to reform the domestic policies that have served to undermine that same system.
Pakistan and the Israel-Palestine Conflict: Transformation in Pakistan’s Approach After the War in Gaza
Pakistan has long combined vocal support for the Palestinian cause with covert engagement with Israel. Since the war in Gaza, this balance has become untenable: public opinion is united against Israel, joining Trump’s Board of Peace has drawn rare cross-party criticism, and new regional alignments put normalization out of reach.
The Oceania Factor in France’s Evolving Indo-Pacific Strategy
This paper examines the two-way relationship between France’s Indo-Pacific strategy and developments in Oceania. Oceania was not a priority in the initial years of France’s Indo-Pacific strategy, as the region was largely treated as secondary to major strategic hotspots and key partnerships, while overseas territories were primarily handled as domestic issues and recipients of a top-down strategy.