TOKYO -- He leads a team of 150,000. He is tasked with defending Japan from foreign invasion, at a time when tensions are rising in the Indo-Pacific in unprecedented ways.
He is also the first chief of staff of Japan's Ground Self-Defense Force not to have graduated the National Defense Academy of Japan, a school that specifically prepares students to serve in the three services -- ground, maritime and air -- of the SDF.
Instead, Gen. Yoshihide Yoshida, is an alumnus of Japan's best university, the University of Tokyo. When he starts discussing strategy, the passion is clear.
"The threats are all consolidated in the Indo-Pacific region. Japan is at the forefront of that threat," he said.
Born in the nation's capital, Yoshida does not come from a defense-related family. The SDF was "a world I just didn't know about," he recalled.
Gen. Yoshihide Yoshida is the first chief of staff of the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force in three decades not to have graduated the National Defense Academy of Japan. © Kyodo But as a Tokyo University student looking for a job, he came across a book that explained "comprehensive security," a concept floated by the government of Prime Minister Masayoshi Ohira in the 70s, which said that defense is about more than just fighting, and includes tackling threats such as natural disasters, energy and food security.
"This is going to be an extremely important area for Japan," he thought. It ignited a desire to work in the field of national security and to one day take part in planning grand strategy. He enlisted.
From 2015 to 2017, Yoshida was part of then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's National Security Council secretariat, where he took part in shaping new roles for the SDF. Following the passing of new national security laws in 2015 that legalized a more proactive approach toward contributions to peace, a new concept of "rush and rescue" was added to protect Japanese nationals, foreign aid workers and peacekeepers under threat.
"I wanted to formulate national security strategy that took into account a view from the field. I felt a tremendous sense of fulfillment," he recalled.
Yoshida joined the SDF in 1986, toward the end of the Cold War. "Back then it was a bipolar world, where the two sides maintained a balance of power. Today it is multipolar," he said, pointing to the U.S.-China rivalry, North Korea's nuclear and missile development, the war on terror.
"Japan is now in the most harsh national security environment since the establishment of the SDF," he said definitively.
When he assumed his role in March, he wrote on the GSDF website: "From Wakkanai and Reibun Island in the north to Yonaguni Island in the south, with the support of local residents, the Ground Self-Defense Force will firmly protect the lives, property and territory of the people in any situation."
The mention of Yonaguni, in the southern Nansei Island chain and just over 100 km from Taiwan, is especially notable.
The just-released 2021 version of Japan's defense white paper pointed out that the country must "pay close attention" to the Taiwan Strait "with a sense of crisis more than ever before." It tied the situation in the strait directly to Japan's security for the first time.
"We will seriously polish our swords so that we never have to unsheathe them," Yoshida said of Japan's attitude toward deterrence.