It is 7,000 miles from Washington to Beijing, but it is only a little more than 1,000 miles from Tokyo to Beijing. If it sometimes seems that Japan is taking China seven times more seriously than is the United States, the explanation may be as simple as that.
Japan’s prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, is on his way out, and his most likely (though not certain) successor is a former foreign minister, Fumio Kishida, who embodies the increasingly assertive national-defense mentality of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party. Kishida has suggested that Japan requires, among other armaments, missiles that could be used to preemptively disable Chinese missiles that might be directed at Japan.
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