Japan’s Defense Industry Goes Global: Ambitions and Challenges
The reforms initiated under Shinzo Abe in 2014, reinforced by Fumio Kishida and further accelerated by Sanae Takaichi in 2026, reflect a profound shift in policy: from a restrictive approach to arms transfers toward an explicit strategy centered on industrial cooperation, joint development, and defense exports.
This transformation is driven by industrial necessity. Weakened by a shrinking domestic market, rising weapons development costs, and continued dependence on United States technologies, Japan’s defense industry faced the prospect of gradual decline. Internationalization has therefore become a prerequisite for its long-term viability and technological advancement.
Defense exports, however, serve objectives that extend well beyond commercial considerations. They are intended to preserve a sovereign defense industrial base, strengthen Japan’s economic security, support its strategic autonomy, and reinforce a network of partners sharing common security interests.
This strategy is underpinned by an unprecedented level of state intervention. Financial support for industry, reforms of export procedures, restructuring of the defense industrial ecosystem, and the expansion of defense cooperation agreements all reflect an assertive industrial policy aimed at accelerating the sector’s internationalization. Early export successes and major collaborative programs such as the fighter-jet Global Combat Air Programme (GCAP) illustrate this new momentum.
Despite this progress, Japan’s defense industry continues to face significant structural challenges. Limited production capacity, shortages of skilled labor, limited experience in international defense markets, and persistent technological dependencies continue to constrain its development.
Against this backdrop, Europe is emerging as a natural partner. Converging security interests, complementary industrial capabilities, and the growing number of cooperation frameworks are creating new opportunities for collaboration.
Available in:
Themes and regions
ISBN / ISSN
Share
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’s Defense Industry Goes Global: Ambitions and Challenges
Céline PAJON
Research Fellow, Head of Japan and Indo-Pacific Research, Center for Asian Studies, Ifri
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.