Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s address to a joint meeting of Congress on Thursday, along with the White House’s red-carpet welcome for a state visit, is expected to underline how much the ground has shifted to bring the two nations closer together in a way that few thought possible when a previous Japanese leader gave his own historic address to Congress nearly a decade ago.
The climate surrounding Kishida’s speech is remarkably different owing to successive governments moving Japan away from self-imposed pacifist policies that restricted its military capabilities and its ability to be a true mutual defense partner of the U.S.; a worsening pattern of coercive and belligerent actions by China and Russia; and the Biden administration’s efforts to build and strengthen what officials call a “latticework” of Indo-Pacific defense alliances and coalitions.
By contrast, the focus when Prime Minster Shinzo Abe addressed Congress in spring 2015 — a first for a Japanese leader — was backward facing, to World War II, and concerned questions of whether he would apologize for Japanese wartime conduct and whether Tokyo had taken adequate steps to compensate Korean victims of human rights crimes.
