Ten years ago, in April 2014, then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe overturned Japan’s longstanding ban on arms exports and established a new agency to oversee this industry. Proponents were excited about Japanese companies’ potential to use their technological prowess to win market share. Critics thundered that Japan was becoming a “merchant of death state”.

In reality, little changed. It was not until 2020 that Japan signed its first arms export deal. This was a contract worth US$100 million (S$133 million) for Mitsubishi Electric Corporation to supply advanced air surveillance radars to the Philippines. This remains an isolated case. Even a decade after the rule change, Japan still does not feature in the list of the world’s top 25 arms exporting countries.