Too often Japanese military equipment is high-quality but produced in small batches. In this, it has something in common with Japan’s famed samurai swords. Ten years ago, in April 2014, then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe overturned Japan’s longstanding ban on arms exports and established a new agency to oversee this industry. Proponents were excited about Japanese companies’ potential to use their technological prowess to win market share.
Critics thundered that Japan was becoming a “merchant of death state”. In reality, little changed. It was not until 2020 that Japan signed its first arms export deal. This was a contract worth US$100 million (S$133 million) for Mitsubishi Electric Corporation to supply advanced air surveillance radars to the Philippines. This remains an isolated case. Even a decade after the rule change, Japan still does not feature in the list of the world’s top 25 arms exporting countries