How Europe's war pushed Japan to prepare for worst

On Yonaguni island, 100km from Taiwan, Adam Withnall hears from a community fearful of Chinese aggression

- Adam Withnall

On a clear day, residents of Japan’s picturesque holiday island of Yonaguni can see Taiwan’s mountain ranges rising above the sea mist. For the people living here, just 100km (62 miles) away from potentially the biggest flashpoint for conflict in the Asia-Pacific region, those mountains serve as a near-daily reminder of the dangers posed by China’s push for territory.

Successive Japanese leaders have warned that Taiwan could be the next Ukraine – that Xi Jinping could follow Vladimir Putin’s example and launch an invasion that would risk drawing large swathes of the world into another proxy war.

That might all seem hypothetical more than 2,000km away in Tokyo, where the government is currently pushing through the biggest military buildup since the Second World War, doubling its defence budget by 2027 and dramatically expanding the operational capabilities of the Japanese Self Defence Forces (SDF).

But on Yonaguni, the threat feels very real indeed, with unprecedented drills carried out in recent months to prepare the island for an evacuation.

Famous across Japan as a holiday destination and for its unique breed of wild horses, Yonaguni is a tiny outpost jutting out of the East China Sea with a population of just 1,700 people. Since 2016 it has hosted an SDF base that now has around 250 personnel, and they and their families make up an important contingent of island life.

During joint US-Japanese exercises late last year known as Keen Sword, the local garrison took part in so-called “disaster prevention drills” with US forces here for the first time – widely seen as preparations for if Taiwan is attacked. The Independent saw Japanese soldiers pretending to be wounded islanders, carried on stretchers to a waiting American C-130 Hercules military transport plane.