The Japanese Self Defense Force

The video was produced by the Japanese SDF.

The Japanese military are about to receive a spending increase for the 8th year in a row.

As Han Kusumato in Stars and Stripes described the coming 2020 budget:

Japan’s Defense Ministry on Friday requested its largest-ever budget and the seventh consecutive spending hike since Prime Minister Shinzo Abe took office in 2012.

The ministry is seeking 5.32 trillion yen, or about $50 billion, for fiscal year 2020, which begins in April. The request reflects the Japanese government’s efforts to strengthen defense in new domains, such as space and cybersecurity, as laid out in new National Defense Program Guidelines reviewed last year.

“We will improve defense capability at a speed fundamentally different from the past in order to respond to the security environment, which is changing by a remarkably fast pace,” the proposal stated.

The Japan Self-Defense Forces rank among the world’s largest and most capable, anywhere from No. 4 to No. 6, depending who makes the list and how it’s calculated.

Army-technology.com, for example, a website produced by a London-based media corporation, ranks Japan’s military at No. 6, behind France and ahead of South Korea.

This year’s defense budget is 5.26 trillion yen, or $49.4 billion, though the defense ministry had requested 5.3 trillion yen.

One of the largest expenditures in the budget request, 201 billion yen, or $1.9 billion, is directed at costs related to U.S. forces stationed in Japan.

Most of that request, 152 billion yen, or $1.43 billion, would pay the salaries of Japanese workers employed by the U.S. military, utility costs and the costs associated with moving U.S. forces for training.