Japan Wants a Stronger Military. Can It Find Enough Troops?

After 75 years of peace, Japan is facing immense challenges in its rush to build a more formidable military. To understand why, consider the Noshiro, a newly commissioned navy frigate equipped with anti-ship missiles and submarine-tracking sonar.

The vessel was designed with an understaffed force in mind: It can function with about two-thirds of the crew needed to operate a predecessor model. Right now, it puts out to sea with even fewer sailors than that.

On the ship’s bridge, tasks that previously occupied seven or eight crew members have been consolidated into using three or four. The ship’s nurse doubles as dishwasher and cook. Extra sprinklers were installed to compensate for the smaller staff onboard to fight fires at sea.

“We are systematizing a lot of things,” Capt. Yoshihiro Iwata, 44, said when the frigate was docked recently in Sasebo, in southwestern Japan. “But, to be honest,” he added, “one person is doing two or three different jobs.”

The slimmed-down crew on the Noshiro nods to the stark demographic reality in Japan as it confronts its gravest security threats in decades from China’s increasingly provocative military actions and North Korea’s growing nuclear arsenal.