Japan’s MSDF ship Sazanami makes a point in Taiwan Strait

October 21, 2024

TOKYO – On Sept. 25, the attention of Japanese government officials was focused on a ship in the Taiwan Strait.

That morning, the Maritime Self-Defense Force destroyer Sazanami began passing through the waterway. It was the first time an MSDF vessel had ever made such a passage in the 70-year history of the SDF. With China aiming to reabsorb Taiwan and increasing its military pressure, the Taiwan Strait, which separates the two sides, is an area of extreme geopolitical sensitivity. The reason for sailing through it was to counter China’s influence in East Asia.

The Japanese government’s concerns about the actions of the Chinese military had intensified since the Chinese side violated Japanese airspace with an intelligence-gathering aircraft on Aug. 26 and sent its aircraft carrier Liaoning through Japan’s contiguous zone on Sept. 18.

Both of these events were unprecedented, and there was a risk that they might escalate further. For that reason, then Prime Minister Fumio Kishida considered sending the Sazanami to the Taiwan Strait as a countermeasure.

The Kishida administration was in a diplomatically advantageous position to make such a move. On Sept. 20, Japan reached an agreement by which China would gradually lift the ban on Japanese seafood that it had imposed in response to the release of treated water from the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant into the ocean. With a conclusion having been reached on at least some pending issues with China, Kishida gave the go-ahead for the dispatch, seeing that if the decision came from him — as he was soon to step down — the Chinese side’s opposition would not drag on for long.

Many MSDF officers had long been frustrated by the moves of the Chinese military around