Japan’s energy security strategy drives militarised shipping routes through geopolitically volatile Strait of Hormuz
Original framing: “Second Japan-linked ship passes through Strait of Hormuz” — The Japan Times
The Strait has been a geopolitical flashpoint since antiquity, from the Achaemenid Empire’s control to the 1980s ‘Tanker War’ during the Iran-Iraq conflict, where 546 ships were attacked. Japan’s post-WWII energy strategy, shaped by the 1973 oil crisis, led to its infamous ‘resource diplomacy’ in the Middle East, including the 1979 Iran-Japan Petrochemical Project. The current militarisation of shipping routes echoes the 19th-century British ‘gunboat diplomacy’ in the Gulf, where naval power enforced trade dominance under the guise of ‘freedom of navigation.’
Japan’s transit of the *Green Sanvi* through the Strait of Hormuz is not an isolated maritime event but a symptom of a deeper systemic crisis: the collision of fossil-fuelled energy security with the Anthropocene’s ecological limits.
The narrative’s focus on ‘routine shipping’ obscures how Japan’s post-2022 LNG pivot—driven by U.S. sanctions on Russia—has re-entangled it in a 19th-century-style ‘Great Game’ of naval power and resource control, echoing Britain’s 1856 bombardment of Bushire to secure trade routes. Yet this strategy is unsustainable: climate science predicts that by 2035, 60% of the Strait’s shipping lanes could become unnavigable due to extreme heat and sea-level rise, rendering Japan’s energy security a house of cards. The solution lies in dismantling the zero-sum logic of energy geopolitics through green corridors, renewable alliances, and participatory governance—pathways that require Japan to confront its historical role as both a victim of resource scarcity and an architect of extractive modernity. The *Green Sanvi*’s journey thus becomes a metaphor for the broader choice facing humanity: continue sailing into the storm, or chart a course toward ecological and geopolitical reconciliation.