Originally published by Pacific Forum, this article is republished with permission.
On June 15, Japanese opposition lawmaker Chikage Koga said during a committee meeting in the upper house that children from economically disadvantaged families enlist in the Self-Defense Forces (SDF), while children from well-off families do not.
Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi objected, calling the remark prejudiced and unacceptable. Koga withdrew the comment and apologized, and her own Constitutional Democratic Party issued a reprimand.
While the remark was not well-supported by the available evidence, the controversy that followed drew attention away from a real problem that deserves serious discussion.
Koga’s claim resembles an argument more familiar in the United States, sometimes called the “poverty draft,” the idea that the military draws disproportionately on young people with few other options. In the American context, where the military is tied to tangible economic benefits such as health coverage and education funding, the argument carries some weight.
In Japan it fits poorly. The country has near-universal employment for new graduates and universal health care, and young people leaving school can choose among many civilian paths. Competition for young workers is intense: In fiscal year 2023, there were 3.52 job openings for every new high-school graduate seeking work. There is no available evidence that the SDF is staffed mainly by the economically disadvantaged. On this point, Koizumi was correct.
The recruitment shortfall itself, however, is serious. According to Defense Ministry figures, the SDF took in 9,959 new recruits in fiscal year 2023, just 51% of its target of 19,598, the lowest rate on record and down from 66% the year before. The shortfall was made stark by the government’s own ambitions: the target had been raised from the previous 11,758 in line with the push to strengthen national defense, yet the actual number of recruits fell by close to 1,800.
The gap was widest at the bottom of the force. Among fixed-term enlisted personnel who serve as privates or the equivalent after a three-month training course, only 3,221 were taken on against a target of 10,628, a rate of about 30%. Recruitment of candidates on the noncommissioned-officer track held up better, at 4,969 against a target of 7,230, or 69%.
These gaps reflect a long-term constraint: the population aged 18 to 26, the main recruiting pool, has fallen by about 40% over three decades, from 17.4 million in 1994 to 10.2 million in 2024.
But the problem runs deeper than demographics and labor market competition. Cultural and institutional factors matter as well. As younger generations place greater value on individual autonomy, work-life balance, and career flexibility, young people may find less appeal than before in the SDF’s rigid hierarchy, demands for collective discipline and emphasis on sacrifice and duty.
At the same time, the SDF’s appeal has been dented by a series of scandals, most prominently the case of a former Ground SDF soldier whose account of being sexually assaulted by colleagues led, after she went public, to the 2023 conviction of three former members and a military-wide probe that uncovered more than 1,300 reported cases of harassment and bullying.
A separate 2023 incident, in which a teenage cadet shot three colleagues at a live-fire range, killing two, added to the impression of an institution struggling with its own culture.
A deeper paradox lies in the gap between public respect for the SDF and the willingness to join it. In the early postwar decades, the forces were viewed with suspicion and at times open hostility, caught up in a long-running dispute over whether they were even constitutional under the war-renouncing Article 9. Critics dismissed them as “tax thieves” (zeikin dorobo).
Over the following decades, however, particularly through their disaster relief work, public regard for the SDF steadily improved, and respect for the institution is now broadly shared.
In a government survey released in January 2026, favorable impressions of the SDF exceeded 90%, and disaster relief remained the role the public most strongly associates with it, cited by 88.3% of respondents. But admiration has not translated into enlistment. In a 2024 WIN/Gallup International survey, only 9% of Japanese said they would be willing to fight for their country, among the lowest shares of any country surveyed and far below the global average of about 50%.
That gap matters because Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is pushing Japan toward a more ambitious defense posture:
- raising defense spending toward 2% of GDP ahead of schedule,
- expanding long-range strike capabilities,
- eying revisions to the country’s constitution and core security strategy documents and
- taking on a more active regional security role in response to a deteriorating security environment in East Asia.
Hardware, however, cannot substitute for personnel. A military that cannot recruit enough people to operate, maintain and sustain these capabilities risks leaving its national and allied responsibilities unfulfilled.
Yet openly discussing that problem remains politically difficult. Koizumi was right to object to broad stereotypes about who serves. And morale does matter for any volunteer force. But acknowledging that economic incentives and social background shape enlistment decisions is not disrespectful. The government has already begun to recognize this.
In December 2024, the cabinet of then-Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba Shigeru adopted a basic policy to raise SDF pay and improve working conditions, explicitly linking these reforms to recruitment difficulties.
This was an important first step, but compensation alone is unlikely to be enough. Pay may help at the margins, but it cannot fully address broader generational shifts in values or the reputational damage caused by institutional scandals.
A longer-term response will require deeper reforms. Improving housing, family support, and career transition pathways could make service more compatible with younger generations’ expectations of flexibility and work-life balance. Strengthening internal accountability, particularly on harassment and abuse, is equally important for restoring trust in the institution.
More fundamentally, policymakers may need to rethink how military service is framed in public life: not only as sacrifice and duty, but as a professional career offering technical expertise, leadership training, and skills transferable to civilian life.
In the longer run, Japan may also need to broaden its recruiting base by expanding the role of women, further opening opportunities for older recruits, and making greater use of specialized civilian talent in emerging defense domains such as cyber defense, intelligence analysis, and unmanned systems.
Ultimately, Japan’s military recruitment challenge is shaped by multiple forces: demographic decline, intense labor market competition, generational shifts toward individual autonomy, work-life balance, and career flexibility, as well as institutional scandals that have eroded trust in the force itself. The controversy over Koga’s remarks highlighted how difficult it remains for Japan to openly discuss the realities of military recruitment. That conversation will only become more necessary.
As Takaichi expands Japan’s defense capabilities and the country adopts a more active security posture, the challenge will not simply be about spending more or acquiring more. Deterrence depends just as much on whether Japan can recruit and retain enough personnel to operate, maintain, and sustain those capabilities. Without that manpower base, the buildup risks becoming hollow: a force equipped for a more demanding role, but unable to fully carry it out, widening the gap between strategic ambition and operational reality at a time of growing regional insecurity.
This would matter not only for Japan, but for the broader US-Japan alliance. Washington has largely welcomed Japan’s accelerated defense buildup and its move toward a more active regional security role, but higher spending will strengthen the alliance only if Japan can also sustain the human foundation behind it. The United States cannot solve Japan’s demographic constraints, but it can support institutional reform through cooperation in training, retention, and emerging defense domains.
Peter Chai (peterchai@aoni.waseda.jp) is a Research Associate in the Faculty of Political Science and Economics at Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan. His research areas are political sociology, comparative politics, and public opinion. His research method is survey analysis, and his regional focuses are East Asia and Japan.
