Why Japan's coastguard has a recruitment problem
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A total of 389 people voluntarily resigned from the coastguard in 2024, according to a report in the Yomiuri newspaper, bringing its staff strength down to 14,123 as of the end of the financial year on March 31.
The personnel who left were six fewer compared with the same period a year earlier, partly due to an aggressive recruitment campaign. But there are concerns that more may leave the service this year.
Since 2013, the coastguard has been seeking to recruit more people to counter a rise in intrusions by Chinese vessels into waters around the
Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea. The islands are presently controlled by
Japan , which refers to them as the Senkaku archipelago.
'The coastguard is facing a similar challenge to the Self-Defence Forces, although there are some differences,' said Garren Mulloy, a professor of international relations at Daito Bunka University and a specialist in military issues.
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'One of the most fundamental problems for the coastguard is that by its nature, personnel are away from friends and family for extended periods, which makes it less appealing as a career choice,' he told This Week in Asia.
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NOTES: 1 As Pär Kristoffer Cassel writes in Grounds of Judgment, a history of extraterritorial privileges in Japan and China, 'China's 'hundred years of humiliation' forms an integral part of the prevailing nationalist narrative, and the struggle against the semicolonial status of China under the 'unequal treaties' has been enshrined in every constitution since 1954.' 2 To be fair, John Foster Dulles, who negotiated the original US-Japan security treaty that ostensibly restored Japan's sovereignty, said that Japan had accepted 'a voluntary continuation of the Occupation.' 3 Nikkei, incidentally, wrote an article last month discussing the trickiness of translating Ishiba's rhetoric. 4 Indeed, when Ishiba used harsh language about the negotiations during the campaign, Tamaki criticized the prime minister for using language that could undermine Japan's negotiating position in the talks with the US. This article first appeared on the Observing Japan Substack and is republished with permission. Read the original here and become a paid subscriber here.
