TOKYO–Japan’s government on Friday approved a record budget for the next fiscal year, ramping up spending on social welfare, as the population ages and defense to tackle regional threats.
The 115.5 trillion yen ($730 billion) budget for the year from April 2025, greenlighted by the Cabinet, includes 8.7 trillion yen in defense spending.
It also includes social security spending of around 38.3 trillion yen — up from 37.7 trillion the previous year.
The defense ministry said in a briefing document that Japan was facing its “toughest and most complex security environment” since World War II, repeating a warning from Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba.
Japan has a pacifist post-war constitution, which limits its military capacity to ostensibly defensive measures.
But it updated key security and defense policies in 2022, explicitly outlining the challenge posed by China, and committed to double its defense spending to the NATO standard of two percent of GDP by 2027.
The 8.7 trillion yen approved Friday will help pay for measures to help attract recruits to Japan’s Self-Defense Forces, and to improve relations between the US and Japanese militaries with locals in Okinawa. AFP
