Now coming into view is the significant fact that Japan is fully engaged in defending our country.

It’s a significant security development that partly underlines President Marcos Jr.’s confident assertion that the recent Philippines, Japan, and United States trilateral summit is “going to change the dynamic” in the region and the conflicted South China Sea (SCS).

The same development, too, underlines Marcos’s belief that a crucial visiting forces deal between the Philippines and Japan is in the final stages — and of the likely future participation of Japan in the annual Balikatan (shoulder-to-shoulder) military exercises between the country and the United States, which kicks off tomorrow.

Undoubtedly, such momentum in the wake of tightening security ties between Japan and us will more likely benefit us than not.

Nonetheless, such a momentum was not easily reached, taking Japan nearly two decades before she would tighten security ties with us.

In those decades, previous administrations entreated the Asian economic power to help procure much-needed defense equipment. 

The late President Noynoy Aquino, for instance, once said, “Nations of goodwill can only benefit if the Japanese government is empowered to assist others.”

However, constitutional constraints limited Japanese assistance, even if Tokyo believed that transferring defense equipment to our country would benefit Japan’s national security.

“Before Tokyo could provide Manila with either kind of backing, it had to establish the legal ability to do so. That required Tokyo to modify its once seemingly immutable pacifist security policies,” said one analyst.

Over the years, however, Japan surmounted both constitutional and political hurdles. So much so that in 2016, the Philippines signed a Defense Equipment and Technology Transfer Agreement with the country.

Japan also provided generous financial aid. Then Prime Minister Sinzho Abe found a creative way to pay for defense transfers by tapping the Japan International Cooperation Agency’s Official Development Assistance program.

The assistance funded the construction of 10 unarmed 44-meter Parola-class patrol boats for the Philippine Coast Guard.

Later, Japan’s more recent aid plan, the Official Security Assistance, allowed the Philippine Navy to receive $ 4 million worth of coastal surveillance radar systems.

While Japan’s security assistance is so far limited to non-lethal equipment, there is talk in Japanese political circles of more changes that would allow Japan to export lethal weapons to her security partners.

Becoming Japan’s newest security partner, then, is why the negotiations on the Reciprocal Access Agreement (RAA) with Japan are crucial.

“If the RAA is concluded, it will become much easier for Japan and the Philippines to cooperate militarily and boost the deterrence against China,” said a Japanese analyst.

If a Japan-Philippines RAA deal is reached, it would be Japan’s first with a Southeast Asian nation.

Significantly, a Japan-Philippines RAA means Japan is finally taking a bigger presence in the Asian region. As Japanese Prime Minister Kishida Fumio recently put it, Japan is “taking greater responsibility” for the Philippines and the rest of Southeast Asia’s security.

Japan has taken this geopolitical tack since it now believes that China is undermining the rules-based international order, especially after China’s marked aggressiveness not only in Japan’s waters in the East China Sea but also in the West Philippine Sea (WPS).

 “China's occupation of many of the islands and the military build-up there from around 2013 really was the turning point for many of the states of Southeast Asia, but it also really made Japan understand what it was up against,” said a Japanese analyst.

Meanwhile, Japan turning into a trusted security partner of the Philippines is politically significant here.

Our growing security ties with Japan, points out a noted security analyst on the WPS tensions, “helps dispel the narrative at home and abroad that the Philippines is overly reliant or subservient to the US.”

In domestic politics, that means Japan’s new security role takes the wind out of the arguments of this administration’s newest and noisiest political detractors on the neo-fascist Filipino Right, the Duterte camp’s China appeasers.