Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi on April 6, afternoon, at the National Diet. (©Sankei by Ataru Haruna)
The Middle East is indispensable to Japan, supplying over 90% of its crude oil, yet it does not occupy a central place in Tokyo's postwar foreign policy. For the most part, Japan deferred to the United States on long-term planning for the region.
That concession to Washington began eroding after October 7, 2023. Beyond disrupting nearly $1 trillion in global trade, Iranian proxy attacks on Red Sea shipping forced Tokyo into a hostage crisis when the Galaxy Leader, a Japanese-operated cargo ship, was hijacked.
In the ensuing months, Japan began to take a more proactive role in the region, working with its G7 partners that year to press for sanctions on Iran and its proxies, diversifying its ties in the Gulf, and expanding regional cooperation on defense and technology.
Still, Japan stopped short of directly participating in US-led Prosperity Guardian operations to safeguard the Red Sea passage. Now, as the world stares down the barrel of a potentially more permanent closure of the Strait of Hormuz, Japan is being compelled to reconsider its enduring political caution toward participating in the region's collective defense.
Table-Stakes for Tokyo
A new book by Washington-based strategist Mohammed Soliman, West Asia: A New American Grand Strategy in the Middle East, outlines the table-stakes for Tokyo in a way that should resonate as it considers how to justify devoting more taxpayer resources to protecting its interests in the region.
Soliman writes, "An allied Asia-first strategy should think about the Middle East as a critical intermediary space connecting the Indo-Pacific and Europe, two theaters of paramount importance … in terms of security and economic growth."
The symmetry with Shinzo Abe's "Confluence of the Two Seas" vision is not accidental. West Asia explicitly extends Abe's logic westward, recasting the Middle East as part of a contiguous maritime arc stretching from the Indo-Pacific to the Mediterranean. In doing so, it presents a blueprint for regional "order-building" that should look and feel familiar to Japanese strategists.
Lost in the Indo-Pacific Shift
Japan's first-ever National Security Strategy (NSS) in 2013 was actually quite explicit about the Middle East's importance, emphasizing that the region's stability is "inseparably linked to the stable supply of energy, and therefore Japan’s very survival and prosperity."
The document went on to expound that "sea lanes of communication, stretching from the Persian Gulf … are critical to Japan due to its dependence on the maritime transport of natural and energy resources from the Middle East." That was probably Tokyo's clearest articulation of the Middle East as the western anchor of a long maritime system feeding Japan through the Indian Ocean, Malacca Strait, and South China Sea.
By contrast, the 2022 NSS shifted Japan's center of gravity more precisely to the Indo-Pacific, barely discussing the Middle East as a distinct regional theater. Where it addressed maritime security, the newer NSS emphasized Japan's activities in the South China Sea.
A military outpost in Djibouti, Tokyo's only permanent overseas base and a linchpin of its security presence along the Bab el-Mandab Strait at the entrance to the Red Sea, received only cursory attention.
The Middle East itself was only mentioned once, in the context of "vulnerable countries … disproportionally suffering large damages from extreme weather and reduction of land area due to climate change, the global spread of infectious diseases, and shortages of food and energy."
Japanese readers of West Asia should take this strategic indecision seriously. It is ahistorical, Soliman argues, to view the Middle East as a remote, standalone arena of geopolitical competition instead of an integral node between Asia and Europe.
Japan's New Frontlines
More than access to resources like oil, gas, and fertilizer, Japan needs access to the operating mainframes that move capital, technology, and production across the region. Access to these systems will shape Japan's future whether Tokyo wills it or not.
That shift is already underway. Capital, technology, and production flows are being reorganized in ways that bind the Indo-Pacific more tightly to the Mediterranean. Gulf sovereign wealth funds, controlling roughly $5 trillion in assets, are deploying capital across Asia at scale.
The US hyperscalers — AWS, Microsoft, Google — are building regional cloud and data infrastructure designed to explicitly plug the Middle East into global systems, linking ports, rail, energy, and other infrastructure across India, the Gulf, and Europe.
Nascent efforts such as the I2U2 (Israel, India, UAE, United States) framework, which was formed in 2022 with the Indo-Pacific Quad in mind, and the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) are therefore best understood as more than discrete infrastructure buildouts. They are early expressions of a new geopolitical architecture.
Japanese industry is already part of this transformation. Of the more than 1,500 Japanese firms operating across the region, 469 have domestic footprints. Through the Japan Organization for Metals and Energy Security (JOGMEC), large trading houses such as Toyota Tsusho, Mitsubishi Corporation, and Hanwa are working with regional partners on hydrogen and ammonia projects, giving Japan a leg up in the early architecture of future energy systems.
And although its $1.8 trillion Government Pension Investment Fund (GPIF) currently has limited exposure to the Middle East, GPIF's pursuit of alternative asset classes — especially private equity — will increasingly place Japanese patient capital inside the region's investment flows.
West Asia Demands More
Indeed, power and influence will not be measured by access alone. It will depend on whether sustained economic and resource diplomacy from institutions like JOGMEC and the Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) will enable Tokyo to shape the standards and platforms that underpin the region's critical infrastructure.
Meeting these conditions more reliably will necessitate a considerable shift in how Japan links its economic and security posture. Djibouti, for example, cannot remain Japan's primary, symbolic military foothold in the region. It will need to evolve alongside Japan's economic interests, supporting a more expansive presence across the maritime routes that connect the Indo-Pacific to Europe.
Likewise, initiatives such as IMEC will test whether Japan is merely a passive participant in new corridors or helps shape how they function from the ground up.
Cooperating in areas where Japan is already known for its strength and expertise will be the easy part. The more difficult piece will be maintaining Japan's geopolitical influence in an increasingly fragmented region.
What is needed is a long-term plan — a "West Asia" strategy that aligns capital, technology, and production with holistic objectives that extend beyond access to the region’s fossil fuels.
Japan's most recent national security strategy did not reduce the Middle East's importance, but it only partially captures the region's growing influence. West Asia should be required reading because it clarifies what is at stake.
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Author: Elliot Silverberg, affiliate with the Middle East Institute in Washington DC.
