Keiji Furuya, who led a delegation to Taipei this week, concluded his three-day visit after meetings with senior Taiwanese leaders including President Tsai Ing-wen. Furuya, 69, chairs a bipartisan parliamentary group that oversees bilateral relations in the absence of formal diplomatic ties between Tokyo and Taipei.
In public remarks he made next to the speaker of Taiwan’s parliament You Si-kun, Furuya quoted Abe Shinzo, Japan’s late prime minister, who, in the months before his death, had linked stability in the Taiwan Strait to Japan’s own security.
“A Taiwan emergency is a Japanese emergency, and therefore an emergency for the Japan-U.S. alliance,” Abe said in November 2021. “The leadership in Beijing, President Xi Jinping in particular, must not misjudge this understanding.”
Furuya, who described himself as a close friend of the Abe family, said: “I believe this 100 percent is the common understanding of Taiwan, the United States and other like-minded countries.”
China was “calmly analyzing” the unfolding Russia-Ukraine war, the lawmaker said.
“It may have ambitions to apply these lessons in the Taiwan Strait or in Okinawa,” Furuya said through an interpreter. “And so I want to emphasize that like-minded countries who share universal values must strengthen their cooperation.”
The island of Okinawa—part of an island chain in the Western Pacific that comprises Japan’s westernmost territory—is home to roughly three-quarters of the 50,000 American troops stationed in Japan. If the U.S. were to intervene in a Chinese attack on Taiwan, its Japan-based forces are most likely to spearhead the defense and may become military targets for Beijing.
Analysts say one of the obvious lessons China may be drawing from Russia’s protracted war in Ukraine is the need to strike in a swift and decisive manner, to prevent the target and its allies from mounting a defense.
The likelihood of Japan being embroiled any future Taiwan Strait crisis, even if only by dint of proximity, has spurred Tokyo’s repeated calls for Beijing not to alter the region’s status quo. Furuya, meanwhile, described the Japan-Taiwan relationship as that of “true friends in adversity.”
His event with You followed a meeting on Monday with Taiwan’s Premier Su Tseng-chang. Both Taiwanese officials were sanctioned by the Chinese government in November.
In remarks to Tsai on Tuesday, Furuya, a member of Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party, praised the Taiwanese president’s “calm and cautious” response to China’s ongoing military drills around the island in recent weeks.
“Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is no different from China’s using the U.S. House Speaker’s recent visit to Taiwan as a pretext to fire missiles into Japan’s exclusive economic zone,” Furuya said, according to a readout by Tsai’s office. “These military threats are absolutely unacceptable to the people of Taiwan and Japan.”
Beijing, which claims Taiwan as its own, has criticized Furuya over his visit and also chided Tokyo for allowing “political manipulation,” China’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Tuesday, stating that the Japanese lawmaker had disregarded multiple diplomatic protests.
China and Japan have been quietly trying to stabilize their relationship this year as the countries mark half a century of formal diplomatic ties.
