Taiwan Question: The Man Behind the Confrontation—and His China Connections

On November 7, an exchange in the Diet set off an unexpected chain reaction. Former Foreign Minister Katsuya Okada pressed Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi on her earlier comments about a potential Taiwan contingency, repeatedly steering the discussion toward whether such a scenario could qualify as a "survival-threatening situation" under Japan's security laws. Takaichi had not raised Taiwan that day, Okada did. And he pursued the point with unusual insistence.

His intervention helped turn what had been a hypothetical legal explanation into a political flashpoint. Beijing reacted sharply. Commentators in Washington and Seoul immediately seized on the exchange. Inside Japan, attention shifted to the man who had gone out of his way to force the Taiwan question onto the floor.

But who is Okada? And why raise Taiwan so aggressively at that moment?

Political Power and Business Ties

Okada is more than a senior opposition figure. He is also the scion of a business family whose commercial presence in China is vast, expanding, and unusually well-treated amid worsening Japan–China tensions. The Okada family controls AEON, Japan's largest retail conglomerate, which continues to invest heavily in China, including the opening of a massive Hunan megamall just one day before his Diet questioning.

Okada himself also made two visits to Beijing in 2025, meeting senior party officials, including those in charge of propaganda and messaging.

Taken together, these threads, the Diet confrontation, the timing of AEON's expansion, and his recent trips to China, have prompted renewed scrutiny of where Okada's political actions end and his family's business interests begin.

A Sudden Diplomatic Flashpoint

Almost immediately after the Diet session, Chinese authorities began signaling displeasure toward Japan. Beijing hardened its stance on seafood import restrictions, hinted at broader retaliatory measures, and reportedly instructed domestic airlines to reduce flights to Japan.

These reactions occurred, despite that Japan's underlying policy had not changed, and despite the Prime Minister's comments being hypothetical. The rapid escalation of pressure underscored how sensitive China remains to Taiwan-related language.

However, it also raised questions about how this particular Diet exchange became a diplomatic flashpoint.

The timing invited scrutiny because of the Okada family's major business presence in China. AEON, controlled by Okada's elder brother, Motoya Okada, is Japan's largest retail conglomerate.

On November 6, just one day before Okada's Diet questioning, AEON's Chinese subsidiary finalized preparations for a massive commercial complex in Hunan Province. The facility, which opened on November 27, includes entertainment zones, restaurants, apparel outlets, and multiple commercial anchors on a scale far beyond that of a standard AEON mall in Japan.

AEON's Exceptionally Smooth Treatment

What stood out was the contrast between Beijing's pressure on Japan at the political level and its otherwise smooth handling of AEON's new megamall. Foreign companies in China often face regulatory headwinds during diplomatic disputes. South Korea's Lotte, for example, saw dozens of stores shuttered during the 2017 THAAD confrontation.

Yet AEON, despite its symbolic status as one of Japan's largest corporate investors in China, faced no delays, additional inspections, or administrative obstacles. Everything proceeded on schedule.

*Katsuya Okada (©Sankei by Yoshinori Saito).*

Okada's 'Friendship' Role

Further questions emerged from Okada's two recent separate trips to China, one in March 2024 and one in August 2025, undertaken in his capacity as vice-chair of the Japan–China Friendship Parliamentarians' Union. These delegations typically meet with the Chinese Communist Party's International Liaison Department.

However, Okada and his delegation also met officials from the Central Propaganda Department during their March visit. This department is responsible for managing China's domestic and international messaging, controlling public narratives, and shaping discourse on sensitive issues ー including Taiwan.

Converging Interests

Okada's August trip involved further meetings with senior Chinese party figures, only a few months before AEON's new commercial complex opened. Taken together, the visits highlighted both Okada's political influence in bilateral relations and his family's substantial economic reliance on the Chinese market.

The structure of the Okada family further amplifies these questions. Motoya Okada oversees AEON's vast China operations and has continued expanding them through periods of political turbulence. Okada's younger brother works within the editorial group of the Tokyo Shimbun, a newspaper known for its critical stance toward conservative governments.

This combination of political authority, commercial interests, and media presence is unusual but not unprecedented in Japanese public life. It becomes noteworthy, however, when all three converge around a policy area as strategically sensitive as China and Taiwan.

Okada vs the US Alliance

During his 2009–2010 tenure as foreign minister, Okada adopted a conspicuously combative posture toward the Japan-US security alliance, one widely seen as driven by domestic political calculus rather than principle.

He pounced on a foreign ministry panel's 2010 exposé of long-secret security pacts to publicly excoriate Japan's previous governments and, by extension, cast doubt on Washington's good faith. This aggressive posturing struck critics as an opportunistic gambit to score points against rivals at the expense of alliance cohesion.

Indeed, one major Japanese daily argued that the much-maligned secret arrangements had in fact been a pragmatic "political wisdom" that ensured the Japan-US alliance's preservation and safeguarded Japan's security interests. Okada's confrontational approach, however, prioritized short-term posturing over the prudent management of Japan's most crucial alliance.

Nuclear Principles as Political Tool

Furthermore, Okada's zeal in unearthing the "secret nuclear transit" issue exemplified what many saw as an ideologically driven crusade miscast as transparency. He relentlessly probed the decades-old question of whether US nuclear-armed vessels had entered Japanese territory – which he argued was a violation of Japan's vaunted "three non-nuclear principles" – and triumphantly confirmed that prior governments had deceived the public about it.

But rather than a principled bid to strengthen policy, Okada's dogged scrutiny appeared to many as an attempt to tarnish Japan's key ally while burnishing his own anti-nuclear credentials.

Yomiuri Shimbun cautioned that clinging to pacifist platitudes in the face of real regional threats was dangerously naive, stating flatly that "given North Korea's and China's growing arsenals, America's "nuclear umbrella" is indispensable. Indeed, it had been an issue since the early eighties.

The same editorial lambasted the Yukio Hatoyama–Okada cabinet for treating any revision of the non-nuclear principles as taboo – a stance it argued was no more enlightened than the climate of secrecy half a century earlier.

In reframing the nuclear policy debate as a morality play, Okada ultimately cast aspersions on Japan's most important partner instead of fortifying mutual trust – sacrificing national interest at the altar of personal conviction.

Auhtor: Daniel Manning