Japanese Minister of Foreign Affairs Yoko Kamikawa yesterday told the National Diet that “peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait is highly important” to Tokyo.
Her remarks were the third time since 2022 that a Japanese foreign minister mentioned the importance of cross-strait peace and stability in their opening speeches to the new session of the Diet.
In 2002 and last year, then-Japanese minister of foreign affairs Yoshimasa Hayashi also spoke about Beijing’s military activities in waters near Taiwan and the firing of missiles into Japan’s exclusive economic zone.
Photo: AFP
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, along with foreign, finance and economic ministers by tradition each give a policy speech at the opening of a new session at the Diet.
Kamikawa, who visited Ukraine last month, also told lawmakers that Japan “must not allow” the use of force to change the “status quo.”
Kishida did not mention Taiwan by name during his speech, but said that Japan would take “a necessary stance” in response to China’s attempt to impose unilateral changes in the East China Sea and South China Sea by force.
He urged Beijing to act responsibility.
Kishida and Kamikawa separately said that Japan continues to support mutually beneficial strategic relations with China.
They also called on China to lift an import ban on Japanese seafood, reiterating that Japan’s discharge of treated radioactive water from the disabled Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant has been proven to be safe.
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