Dr. Arnab Dasgupta is a Research Analyst at the Manohar Parrikar Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses (MP-IDSA), New Delhi. He holds a PhD in Japanese studies from Jawaharlal Nehru University, India. He was a Visiting Researcher at GRIPS (Tokyo) under the Japan Foundation Doctoral Fellowship for Japanese Studies (2017).
“[Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba] … stated that he would like to work together with President Trump to continue elevating the Japan-U.S. Alliance to new heights to realize a free and open Indo-Pacific. The two leaders shared…views on the severe and complex security environment, and concurred to [sic] work closely to realize a free and open Indo-Pacific and to elevate the Japan-U.S. Alliance to new heights”– reads the initial paragraph of the official transcript of the Japan-US Summit Meeting held on February 7, 2025, in Washington DC, between Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba and US President Donald Trump.
As is obvious from the above excerpt, the words ‘new heights’ appear prominent, leading many to speculate on the possibility that the two leaders seek to recover some sort of ‘golden age’ of bilateral relations. This begs two prominent questions: What does this ‘golden age’ that both leaders seek a return to, consist of? And, is it achievable under current circumstances?
What is the golden age of Japan-US relations? This question is surprisingly difficult to answer, though many have tried to do so in the past. Relations between the two countries have so frequently depended upon the men at the helm that the quest for a Golden Age may usefully be elided into a search for strong interpersonal ties between the incumbent leaders of both countries. Prime Minister Ishiba, it can be reasonably certain, is thinking of the high point of cooperation achieved between the late Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and President Trump during his first term in 2016. However, close interpersonal ties between the US President and the Japanese Prime Minister stretch back in time.
Close cooperative relations between President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi in the early 2000s assured the US of Japan’s staunch support in the aftermath of 9/11 and the Global War on Terror. In the 1980s, the friendship between US President Ronald Reagan and Japanese Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone gave rise to the popular stories of ‘Ron-Yasu relations’, while ensuring that Japan’s economic competitiveness was curbed by actions such as the Structural Impediments Initiative (SII) and Super 301. Even further back, one can see the accommodative ties between Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida and General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in the Far East (and an aspiring president), which shaped Japan’s post-war direction in several ways.
In all these cases, two factors remained consistent. First, all of Ishiba’s predecessors mentioned above were occupied by the premiership in circumstances of extreme political stability. Yoshida stood at the head of a government where the newly-born Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) enjoyed a comfortable 264-seat majority in the Diet. Nakasone, Koizumi and Abe enjoyed unquestioned dominance over the Japanese political system when they participated in the dialogue with their US counterparts, with Koizumi in the process of establishing his second Cabinet in the wake of 9/11 and Nakasone and Abe in the middle of their third respective terms in office. Ishiba, on the other hand, enjoys none of these advantages. He heads a minority government within the Diet, an ignominy observed only twice before in the LDP’s seventy-year history. His electoral defeat in 2024 is deeply indicative of the short shrift Japanese electors have given his party. As such, he has neither the room for maneuver nor the scope for compromise, that these earlier leaders possessed.
Another critical factor is Ishiba’s interlocutor across the table. US Presidents Truman (who MacArthur reported to), Reagan and Bush, despite their aggressive instincts, were fundamentally defenders of the status quo. However, Trump has no such compunctions: he seeks to secure America’s primacy within the international system and is prepared to upend that system if necessary, to achieve it. In this circumstance, it is difficult to imagine what kind of ‘new heights’ the Japan-US alliance can achieve which do not concomitantly demand significantly enhanced commitments from Japan, especially on defense issues. The financial strain this will impose on the flagging economy, along with the reactions such commitments will engender throughout Asia, remain an open question worth pondering.
Japan-US relations have displayed cyclical trends throughout an 80-year-long history. This is symptomatic of the US’ sporadic interest in East Asia as a whole. It is only as an artifact of President Trump’s fixation on strategic competition with China that Japan-US relations, which throughout most of the 21st century was in a state of ‘Japan-passing’, have been reinvested in. It is difficult to say whether Trump’s attention can be successfully retained long enough to keep him invested in East Asian security; his stated commitments certainly militate against them. On the other hand, Japan faces real limits as to what is feasible to improve security and diplomatic ties. The ‘golden age’ of Japan-US relations, it may thus be concluded, remain at present nothing more than a rhetorical flourish designed to appeal to Trump’s inauguration speech promises.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in the article are personal.
