Japan wants a stronger military. Can it find enough troops?
SASEBO, Japan — After 75 years of peace, Japan is facing immense challenges in its rush to build a more formidable military. To understand why, consider the Noshiro, a newly commissioned navy frigate equipped with antiship missiles and submarine-tracking sonar.
The vessel was designed with an understaffed force in mind: It can function with about twothirds of the crew needed to operate a predecessor model. Right now, it puts out to sea with even fewer sailors than that.
On the ship’s bridge, tasks that previously occupied seven or eight crew members have been consolidated into using three or four. The ship’s nurse doubles as dishwasher and cook. Extra sprinklers were installed to compensate for the smaller staff onboard to fight fires at sea.
“We are systematizing a lot of things,” Captain Yoshihiro Iwata, 44, said when the frigate was docked recently in Sasebo, in southwestern Japan. “But, to be honest,” he added, “one person is doing two or three different jobs.”
The slimmed-down crew on the Noshiro nods to the stark demographic reality in Japan as it confronts its gravest security threats in decades from China’s increasingly provocative military actions and North Korea’s growing nuclear arsenal.
Japan has committed to raising military spending to 2 percent of gross domestic product, or by about 60 percent, over the next five years, which would give it the third-largest defense budget in the world. It is rapidly acquiring Tomahawk missiles and has spent about $30 million on ballistic missile defense systems.
But as the population rapidly ages and shrinks — nearly onethird of Japanese people are over 65, and births fell to a record low last year — experts worry that the military simply won’t be able to staff traditional fleets and squadrons.
The army, navy, and air force have failed to reach recruitment targets for years, and the number of active personnel — about 247,000 — is nearly 10 percent lower than it was in 1990.
Even as Japan struggles to recruit conventional troops, it must also attract new battalions of technologically savvy soldiers to operate sophisticated equipment or protect against cyberattacks. For some tasks, military leaders say they can turn to unmanned systems like drones, but such technology can still require large numbers of personnel to operate.
Since the end of World War II, Japan, which hosts more American troops than any other nation, has effectively been a protectorate of the United States.
American political and military leaders have spoken approvingly of Japan’s defense progress, hailing its budgetary expansion and new investments in military hardware. “It brings credibility to deterrence,” said Rahm Emanuel, the US ambassador to Japan.
To demonstrate closer coordination, the two nations have expanded and accelerated military exercises.
The idea is to train with Japanese troops so that “we can truly swap out one platform or capacity from one nation for another,” said Rear Admiral Christopher D. Stone, commander of Expeditionary Strike Group 7 in Okinawa.
The tighter relationship comes as the Japanese public’s view of the military has evolved.