Why is Japan pouring money into Ukraine?

“If your gonna play with rattlesnakes, you better know what rattlesnakes do.” –Smokey Yunick.

What did Japan’s Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, leader of a transparent, liberal democracy, hope to gain by shaking hands with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, the head of one of the most corrupt autocracies in Europe?

On March 21, 2023, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida shook hands with former actor and comedian Zelensky in Kyiv.  At a joint news conference, Kishida pledged $500 million in non-lethal military and other aid to Ukraine.

This aid is on top of over $7 billion previously pledged to Ukraine by Japan since the start of Russia’s “special military operation” against eastern Ukraine.  In April 2023, Japanese Foreign Minister Yoshimasa Hayashi promised Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba an additional $7 billion in aid.  To put Japan’s contribution in perspective, the United States has so far sent more than $77 billion to Ukraine, most of it as military aid.

In December 2022, Kishida promised to significantly increase defense spending over the next five years to counter an increasingly aggressive China and a nuclear-armed North Korea.  Defense spending is competing among other high priority social programs.  Whether Kishida will increase taxes, cut budgets or issue more debt is not clear. Fundamentally, the government is asking the Japanese taxpayer to “buy a hamburger today to be paid for next Tuesday.”

Indeed, there are other pressing domestic priorities that could use an immediate heavy cash infusion.  On July 3, 2023, the Asahi Shimbun reported that the body of “an elderly man on welfare who died alone” was left in his apartment in Tokyo’s Edogawa Ward two months after he died.  The ward official responsible for the elderly man’s case stated, “I put off disposing of the body because I had other work to do.” The Asahi further reported that “his supervisor… also failed to confirm whether he [the case worker] had taken the necessary steps, such as burial procedures.” The Asahi noted that “statistics indicate that case workers are overloaded in urban areas” and work standards are below those set by law.

Japan is facing a rise in the proportion of those over 65 and Japanese are living longer. Japan compared to the U.S. has almost double the number of people over 65.  Japan is also facing a decline in the number people in the workforce, with consequences to tax revenues and funding for government priorities, including defense. 

Japan can ill afford to spend money on frivolity, on things that do not maintain her welfare and security.  Perhaps $7 billion, or even $500 million, could be used to hire more case workers, to upgrade the communication system or further improve assistance to the elderly.  Perhaps some of the $7 billion, or even $500 million, could be used to develop robotic systems to aid the elderly, to supplement “overworked” case workers.

Instead, the current Japanese political elite has cast its lot with the globalists and poured billions into a vast black hole, a war in Europe which does not enhance Japan’s security or welfare.

That a high-trust, word-is-bond society such as Japan would even give a single yen to a kleptocracy such as Ukraine is unimaginable.  Ukraine is no better than Russia with respect to corruption, in both private and public sectors.  In the past, the western media scathingly condemned Ukraine’s corruption. Nothing has tangibly changed but Ukraine is somehow now the West’s best, long-standing Eastern European friend. 

As a somewhat disinterested outsider, Japan had almost no involvement in Ukraine until Washington D.C.’s anti-Russia temper tantrums in 2021.  The last prime minister to visit Ukraine was Shinzo Abe in 2015.  The value of Japanese exports to Ukraine in 2019 was over just $500 million. Japanese exports were just under $600 million to Mongolia—a country that has about one-tenth of Ukraine’s population.

In fact, former Prime Minister Abe worked with Russian President Vladimir Putin to resolve the Northern Territories dispute.  The Northern Territories is a chain of Japanese islands off the northeast coast of Hokkaido that was occupied by the Soviet Union soon after Japan accepted the Potsdam Declaration.  Now, with Japan fully up to her elbows in Ukraine’s dirty laundry—at America’s behest—Russia will never voluntarily relinquish the Northern Territories. Japan may limply protest all she wants but the Islands are now forever Russian territory.  As Oliver Hardy chided Stan Laurel at the end of yet another misadventure, “Here’s another fine kettle of fish you’ve pickled me in!”

Towards the end of his second term, President George Washington warned of “excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another.”  In 1821 future president John Quincy Adams advised the young American republic, “America goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.” Japan has adopted numerous Western technologies and ideas during her Meiji Revolution. Japan should also adopt the wisdom of Washington and Adams.

Japan will get a condescending pat on the head from the globalists for being nice with the Ukrainian rattlesnake.  Japan will also eventually get the serpent’s venom.

Image: Screen shot from Prime Minister’s Office of Japan video, via YouTube