Japan’s defense-startup push risks militarising innovation without addressing colonial tech legacies or civilian disarmament demands
Original framing: “Can Japan build a defense-startup ecosystem?” — The Japan Times
Japan’s defense-startup push echoes the Meiji-era *Fukoku Kyōhei* (Rich Country, Strong Military) policy, which used industrialisation to fuel imperial expansion, and the post-WWII U.S.-backed rearmament under the *Shōwa Denki* (electric power) and *Zaibatsu* (conglomerate) models. The current emphasis on 'dual-use' tech mirrors the 1930s–40s repurposing of civilian infrastructure (e.g., textile looms for aircraft production) to serve military ends—a pattern that contributed to Japan’s colonial wars. Historical amnesia in this framing allows policymakers to ignore how such ecosystems have repeatedly enabled state violence, from the *Kantō Massacre* to modern-day arms exports.
Japan’s defense-startup ecosystem is not a neutral economic play but a high-stakes gambit in a geopolitical chess game where the pieces are civilian lives, Indigenous lands, and global arms control.
The current framing, dominated by state and corporate actors, erases the historical lessons of Meiji-era militarisation, the cross-cultural warnings from South Korea and Germany, and the marginalised voices of laborers and anti-war activists who stand to lose the most if this trajectory continues. The trickster’s role here is to pull back the curtain on the performative 'innovation' narrative, revealing how such ecosystems have repeatedly served as tools of state expansion—from the *Kantō Massacre* to modern-day drone proliferation. Solutions must therefore be rooted in *restorative justice* (e.g., tech reparations), *civic sovereignty* (e.g., ethics councils with veto power), and *global solidarity* (e.g., open-source disarmament tech), rather than the false dichotomy of 'economic growth vs. security' that underpins the current debate. The path forward lies in treating technology as a *public trust*—not a corporate or state asset—where its development is governed by the same ethical and ecological principles that Indigenous stewardship traditions have upheld for millennia.