Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 could be regarded as a critical juncture, when Japan’s security policy made a significant departure from the past. Since then, Japan has put itself on course to nearly double its defense spending, acquired long-range missile capabilities that could strike foreign territory, and most recently greenlit the possibility of exporting lethal weapons to conflict zones. 

All of these major developments in Japan’s security policy history crossed long-standing thresholds that had previously been maintained tenaciously, and they have done so without major public pushback. This reflects a shifting perception among the Japanese public that Ukraine, suffering the onslaught today, could in fact be Japan itself in the future. 

Along with Japan’s pacifist security policies, conciliatory diplomacy toward Russia – once a hallmark of Abe Shinzo’s approach – also faded. Abe had conceived a strategy in which a joint economic program could incentivize Russia to return the disputed Northern Territories (administered by Russia as the Kuril Islands) and conclude a peace treaty, thereby potentially weakening the growing China-Russia alignment. However, the scheme ultimately came to naught. The stalemate in territorial negotiations made it easier for Japan to align its post-2022 sanctions – far firmer than those imposed following the 2014 annexation of Crimea – with those of Western democratic states, whose leaders committed to supporting Ukraine for as long as necessary. 

However, for Japan and other Western states, supporting Ukraine indefinitely did not mean doing so at significant cost to their own interests. While facing mounting pressure to reconsider, Japan has continued its imports of LNG from the Sakhalin-2 project in Russia’s Far East. And while the European Union, which has ramped up its military aid to Ukraine since the inauguration of the second Trump administration, has put forward a plan to phase out Russian gas, Japan has continued to extend its reliance on it. 

In addition, while Japan has yet to see any progress on a negotiated settlement on the territorial issue and a peace treaty, Japanese prime ministers since the 2022 Russian invasion have still not given up on this elusive quest. Seven months after the outbreak of the full-scale war in Ukraine, then-Prime Minister Kishida Fumio declared that “Russia’s aggression shakes the very foundations of the international order.” He went on to affirm, however, that Japan “will continue to uphold our policy of resolving the territorial issue and concluding a peace treaty” with Russia. 

The Japanese leaders who followed Kishida – Ishiba Shiergu and now Takaichi Sanae – have used near-identical language to describe their governments’ continued determination to resolve issues that trace their origins to the closing battles of World War II.

Japan has thus far maintained a posture in which Tokyo supports Ukraine while avoiding a complete severance of its energy dependence on Russia. However, recent reports indicate that the Japanese government is considering measures that go beyond the current arrangement. According to Kyodo News, the government was contemplating sending a trade delegation to Ukraine as early as May to lay the groundwork for the normalization of commercial relations following a ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine, which still appears far-fetched at this stage. While the government has denied this reporting, ongoing energy imports – including Japan’s purchase of recently sanctioned-exempt Russian oil – make it difficult to dismiss the notion that there is an appetite within the government and the Japanese private sector to envision a postwar scenario in Ukraine.

Outside the Japanese government, there appears to be greater space for calls to improve relations with Russia. At a press conference in Moscow, Sasakawa Yohei, honorary chairman of the Nippon Foundation and a contributor to the conservative Sankei Shimbun, emphasized that “it is important to continue exchanges between the two countries at the private level” and also stated that “there is no eternal confrontation between nations.” In comments to TASS, the Russian state news agency, a senior fellow of the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, Tsuneo Watanabe, argued that the war in Iran had made it even more important for Japan to maintain – and even restore and develop – ties with countries including Russia. 

Meanwhile, Suzuki Muneo, a member of the House of Councillors of the Liberal Democratic Party known as a Russia specialist, has scheduled another visit to Moscow, on the grounds that “Japan–Russia relations, at their worst in the postwar period, must somehow be improved.” Following his previous visit to Moscow in late December, Suzuki briefed Takaichi directly at the Prime Minister’s Office. 

It is worth noting that in 2023, Suzuki became the first Diet member to visit Russia since the outbreak of the war. At the time, he was affiliated with Nippon Ishin no Kai, but he resigned from the party amid mounting internal and external pressure – partly because the trip to Moscow had not been authorized and due to his alleged pro-Russian remarks.

Japan’s Russia policy reflects the contradictions and realities of contemporary foreign policy, in which policymakers must weigh competing interests and translate them into a coherent but necessarily uneven strategy. The question now is how far Japan can continue to tighten its stance against a norm-breaking power that nonetheless remains embedded in its energy security architecture, while still safeguarding domestic stability and economic resilience.

Japan’s approach is ultimately defined less by coherence than by calibrated ambiguity. This has allowed Tokyo to align more closely with Western partners on Ukraine while avoiding a complete rupture with Moscow. Rather than another abrupt U-turn, Japan is more likely to continue navigating incremental adjustments shaped by external shocks and internal policy competition. The result is not strategic clarity, but managed tension.