Japanese Defence Minister Minoru Kihara (centre) delivers his statement with Philippines’ Defence Secretary Gilberto Teodoro Jr.,(not in picture) during a meeting to discuss bilateral ties and defence, as well as regional security, in Philippines, on July 8, 2024.
| Photo Credit: AP

Japan and the Philippines signed a key defence pact on July 8 allowing the deployment of Japanese forces for joint military exercises, including live-fire drills, to the Southeast Asian nation that came under brutal Japanese occupation in World War II but is now building an alliance with Tokyo as they face an increasingly assertive China.

“The Reciprocal Access Agreement, which similarly allows Filipino forces to enter Japan for joint combat training, was signed by Philippine Defence Secretary Gilberto Teodoro and Japanese Foreign Minister Yoko Kamikawa in a Manila ceremony witnessed by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. It would take effect after ratification by the countries’ legislatures,” Philippine and Japanese officials said.

Mr. Kamikawa called the signing of the defence agreement “a groundbreaking achievement” that should further boost defense cooperation between Japan and the Philippines.

“A free and open international order based on the rule of law is the foundation of regional peace and prosperity,” she said. “We would like to work closely with your country to maintain and strengthen this.”

Mr. Kamikawa and Japanese Defence Minister Minoru Kihara later held talks with their Philippine counterparts on ways to further deepen relations. The defence pact with the Philippines is the first to be forged by Japan in Asia. Japan signed similar accords with Australia in 2022 and with Britain in 2023.

Under Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, the Japanese government has taken steps to boost its security and defensive firepower, including a counterstrike capability that breaks from Japan’s postwar principle of focussing only on self-defence, amid threats from North Korea and China’s growing assertiveness. It’s doubling defense spending in a five-year period to 2027 in a move to bolster its military power and make Japan the world’s third-biggest military spender after the United States and China.

Many of Japan’s Asian neighbours, including the Philippines, came under Japanese aggression until its defeat in World War II and Japan’s efforts to bolster its military role and spending could be a sensitive issue. Japan and the Philippines, however, have steadily deepened defence and security ties.

Mr. Kishida’s moves dovetail with Mr. Marcos’ effort to forge security alliances to bolster the Philippine military’s limited ability to defend Manila’s territorial interests in the South China Sea. The busy sea passage is a key global trade route which has been claimed virtually in its entirety by China but also contested in part by the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and Taiwan.

The United States has also been strengthening an arc of military alliances in the Indo-Pacific to better counter China, including in any future confrontation over Taiwan, and reassure its Asian allies. Japan and the Philippines are treaty allies of the U.S. and their leaders held three-way talks in April at the White House, where President Joe Biden renewed Washington’s “ironclad” commitment to defend Japan and the Philippines.

Japan has had a longstanding territorial dispute with China over islands in the East China Sea. Chinese and Philippine coast guard and navy ships, meanwhile, have been involved in a series of tense confrontations in the South China Sea since last year.

In the worst confrontation so far, Chinese coast guard personnel armed with knives, spears and an axe aboard motorboats repeatedly rammed and destroyed two Philippine navy supply vessels on June 17 in a chaotic faceoff in the disputed Second Thomas Shoal that injured several Filipino sailors. Chinese coast guard personnel seized seven navy rifles.

The Philippines strongly protested the Chinese coast guard’s actions and demanded $1 million for the damage and the return of the rifles. China accused the Philippines of instigating the violence, saying the Filipino sailors strayed into what it called Chinese territorial waters despite warnings.

Japan and the United States were among the first to express alarm over the Chinese actions and call on Beijing to abide by international laws. Washington is obligated to defend the Philippines, its oldest treaty ally in Asia, if Filipino forces, ships and aircraft come under an armed attack, including in the South China Sea.

An aerial photo of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant in Okuma, Fukushima prefecture, Japan. File
| Photo Credit: AP

“The first phase of releasing treated waste water from Fukushima that has angered China will end on September 11 as planned,” the stricken Japanese nuclear plant’s operator said.

“TEPCO added that levels of radioactive tritium in tested seawater samples near the plant in north-east Japan were within safe limits,” according to a statement on September 7.

Why is Japan planning to flush Fukushima wastewater into the ocean?

Japan began on August 24 discharging into the Pacific some of the 1.34 million tonnes of waste water that has collected since a tsunami crippled the facility in 2011.

Japan insists that the discharge is safe, a view backed by the UN atomic agency, but China banned all seafood imports from its neighbour, accusing it of treating the sea like a “sewer”.

Announcing the end of the first phase of releasing 7,800 tonnes of the water on September 11, TEPCO gave no date for the start of the second discharge.

“After completion of the first discharge, we will conduct an inspection of (the) entire … water dilution/discharge facility and review the operational records from the first discharge,” it said.

It added that a “leak alarm” sounded on Wednesday in a waste water transfer line, but that no leak was detected. Staff “quickly conducted a field inspection in accordance with safety check procedures and it was confirmed that there was no leak of… treated water,” the statement said.

The water, equivalent to 540 Olympic pools’ worth, has been used to cool the three reactors that went into meltdown in 2011, in one of the world’s worst nuclear catastrophes.

Japan says that all radioactive elements have been filtered out except tritium, levels of which are well within safe limits and below that released by nuclear plants in their normal operations around the world.

How Japan plans to release Fukushima water into the ocean

The release, which is expected to take decades to complete, is aimed at making space to begin removing the highly dangerous radioactive fuel and rubble from the wrecked reactors.

Last week Prime Minister Fumio Kishida publicly ate fish from Fukushima in an effort to reassure consumers, as did the U.S. Ambassador to Japan in a show of support.

The government on Monday also beefed up an aid package for the fishing sector following the seafood import ban by China, Japan’s biggest export market for fish.