Japan’s Grand Strategy in Outer Space

Abstract

The international space order is marked by a rising number of spacefaring countries, unprecedented commercial trends, and a slide toward weaponization. These deeply intertwined trends present threats, challenges, opportunities, and uncertainties for all states. Using the lens of grand strategy, this chapter illuminates how Japan is producing prosperity and security in its national interest. Given its deeply developmental and historically realist orientation, the Japanese state is doing so by proactive positioning on all fronts in the space domain—economic, military, diplomatic. Through whatever means, processes, and forums available, the Japanese state’s all-fronts vision keeps it attentive to locking in specific national advantages, big or small, concrete or nebulous. The Japanese state is not so much sprinting in some finite space race as it is proactively positioning in an unbounded marathon. On that field, it matters less who is first and what was won and more whether Japan is present.