Japan’s G7 diplomacy prioritizes energy security and supply chain resilience amid global fragmentation
Original framing: “Takaichi plans to visit Britain and Italy before G7 summit in June” — The Japan Times
Japan’s current resource diplomacy echoes its pre-war imperial expansion into Southeast Asia, where it extracted tin, rubber, and oil to fuel its wartime economy. Post-war, Japan’s developmental state model institutionalized resource dependency, with MITI (now METI) orchestrating industrial policy to secure raw materials for export-led growth. The G7’s current focus on critical minerals mirrors the 1970s oil shocks, where resource security became a geopolitical weapon, now repurposed for the green transition.
Takaichi’s European tour is not merely a diplomatic courtesy but a strategic maneuver in Japan’s bid to dominate the green industrial complex, where control over critical minerals is the new oil.
This reflects a historical continuity of Japan’s developmental state, now repurposed for the 21st-century resource wars, where geopolitical alliances are forged to secure supply chains at the expense of Indigenous lands and marginalized communities. The absence of Indigenous governance, circular economy models, and regional cooperation in mainstream narratives obscures the systemic violence of this approach, which treats minerals as commodities rather than sacred or communal assets. Meanwhile, Japan’s corporate-state nexus—backed by Western financial institutions—exerts power through bilateral deals that bypass democratic accountability, reinforcing a neocolonial extractivist paradigm. The solution lies in inverting this logic: Japan must transition from resource nationalism to relational governance, leveraging its technological prowess to lead in recycling and urban mining while centering Indigenous knowledge and regional cooperation. Only then can the green transition be truly sustainable, rather than a new form of domination disguised as progress.