Is the Japanese revival imminent?

Twenty-first century Japan has yet to experience a social and political “earthquake” on par with those that have defined modern Japanese history, from the Meiji Restoration of 1868 to Japan’s defeat in World War II in 1945. But the tectonic plates of Japanese geopolitics are moving—and fast.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced a resolution Tuesday that will enable the government to sidestep Japan’s 60-year-old constitutional ban on maintaining armed forces and waging war, thus laying the legal basis for a revival of Japanese military power that, in practice, is already well underway. One week ago, Abe outlined a set of structural economic reforms on which his administration hopes to ground the long-term revival of Japan’s economic power. These developments, viewed against a backdrop of renewed diplomatic outreach to Southeast Asia, North Korea, India, Russia, the Middle East and Africa in the two years since Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party regained power in 2012, suggest Japan is starting to operate differently at home and abroad.