It is a great pleasure and a very special occasion for me to be able to speak here at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation. I am speaking to you not only as German Foreign Minister, but also as a long-standing friend of Japan in my own right. A day like today shows that the closeness between two countries is not always determined by geographical proximity. My hometown of Kiel is situated over 9000 kilometres from Tokyo – on the very opposite side of the globe. And yet I only have to look at my daily life to show that this distance is actually shorter than it appears on the map.

Since I took office, an intricate Japanese fan – a beautiful gift from you, my dear Minoru Kiuchi – has been on my desk. And when I walk down the corridors in the Federal Foreign Office and knock at a colleague’s door, there is a good chance that he or she will have at least one excellent contact at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, as our young diplomats get to know one another at the very start of their careers thanks to the long-standing training cooperation between our diplomatic academies. And when I’m at home with my daughters, I see that they are able to speak at least a little Japanese because all three of them took some Japanese classes at their grammar school in Kiel and took part in an exchange with a school in Kobe.

It is no coincidence that my first official visit to Asia has taken me to Japan. It was my express wish to come here. I would like to pay tribute to the close ties between our countries. And I would like to make our long-standing partnership and close diplomatic relations even stronger.

Geographically, our countries are far apart from one another, but we are close and, in many ways, we are similar, not least in the values that shape us.

We are currently commemorating the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the end of the Second World War 80 years ago – a war that my country unleashed in Europe; a war that cost the lives of over 50 million people worldwide and at whose end the European continent and parts of Asia, including Japan and my country, lay in ruins; a war that taught our two countries the crucial lesson that never again should power stand above the law in international relations, never again may borders be redrawn by the furious hunger for conquests and the striving for spheres of influence, never again may human dignity be devalued by state-sponsored violence.

We share these values to this day as strong democracies, as proponents of the rules-based international order and as export-oriented trading nations.

When I took office as German Foreign Minister, I defined three key priorities for my country’s foreign policy, namely freedom, security and prosperity. I firmly believe that how we champion these priorities has much in common with Japan and great potential for cooperation.

Freedom, security and prosperity – these are the foundations of our democratic societies in Germany and Japan. And yet we cannot take these values for granted or regard them as a matter of course at present. For many years now, the organisation Freedom House has measured the state of democracies worldwide. And for the past 19 years, without interruption, it has seen that freedom is being eroded worldwide. In so many parts of the world, we are witnessing attempts to alter the international order through the use of violence, such as Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine; through military threats, be they North Korea’s missile tests, be they in the South China Sea or be they directed against Taiwan; through hybrid influence and attempts to interfere with our democratic discourses via fake news and incitement; through illegal intervention in other countries’ fates; through authoritarian states, some of which even pursue their opponents when they flee to our countries.

All of this threatens our security to a greater and more blatant extent than we could have imagined just a few years ago.

Without security, there can be no freedom. And unfortunately, we are also seeing that our freedom is not only coming under pressure from the outside, but also partly in our own societies, in Asia, in Europe, because of populist movements that offer apparently simple solutions and try to undermine fundamental democratic values.

If we want to counteract this, we need to be guided by two things. Firstly, our actions cannot be based on the fleeting hope that the once-familiar world where many certainties were a matter of course will simply reappear. And secondly, we must not forget that we are not alone in trying to meet these challenges, that we stand united as partners, indeed as friends, in the world.

At this time in particular, we can stand united as democracies in order to strengthen and defend our democratic freedom. It is good that we make use of every opportunity to discuss these matters with one another, for example at the upcoming UN General Assembly in New York, where we work with close partners from Europe and Asia to this end.

Ladies and gentlemen, our freedom is coming under pressure because our security is at risk. And more than ever in today’s world, security requires us to take on responsibility ourselves. Germany and Japan are stepping up. In Germany, we talk about a historic turning point, and we are now investing heavily in our military defence capability. We want to be able to defend ourselves so that we don’t have to defend ourselves. This spring, we took the important step of adapting our constitutional rules on defence spending. And at the NATO Summit in June, we and our Allies agreed to invest five percent of our GDP in defence in the future. In the new version of its National Security Strategy in 2022, Japan sent a clear message by stating that it would double its defence spending by 2027. Naturally, Germany and Japan will continue to choose alliances and diplomacy over unilateral action and escalation. But defence has become more important for our two countries.

For us in Germany, this turning point goes hand in hand with two key insights, which our friends in Japan may have understood before we did.

Firstly, that European and Asian security are exceptionally closely interwoven. For example, Russia’s war of aggression also affects stability in the Pacific. When Russia fires artillery shells at Ukraine, most of which come from North Korea, this undermines European security. However, it also upsets the balance in Asia because it is obvious that Russia will reward North Korea by transferring technology and expertise. But above all, crucial support from China enables Russia to wage war. Eighty percent of the dual-use goods used by Russia come from China. And at the same time, China is the largest importer of Russian oil and gas. Naturally, this development is highly detrimental not only to our European security interests, but also to those of our partners in the Pacific. It shows that China may accept the principles of non-interference and territorial integrity on paper, but undermines them in practice.

If our security situations are closely interlinked, then it is no coincidence that we are also committed to security beyond our own region. And I would like to expressly thank Japan for its continued political, economic and humanitarian support for Ukraine and its close cooperation with NATO. With support for Ukraine coming to around 12 billion US dollars and the consistent implementation of sanctions against Russia, Japan is making a decisive contribution to Ukraine and our common security.

Germany is also playing its part and will continue to do so with greater engagement through our liaison officers in the region, joint exercises, a constructive dialogue with Japan on security policy, and our maritime presence in the region. This was not a matter of course for our Navy. There were tough discussions, including in the German Bundestag. And it is good that we established a clear position. The frigates we have now deployed several times show our interest in security and the upholding of international law in the Indo-Pacific.

We are showing that the freedom of shipping routes is a key foreign and security policy interest for us. The same goes for the monitoring of the sanctions against North Korea, for which a German frigate has been deployed on several occasions. I would like to express my sincere gratitude for the warm welcome extended to our Navy and Air Force contingents here in Japan and for the hospitality they enjoyed in recent years during the Indo-Pacific deployment. These direct personal contacts create trust, understanding and friendship.

The second thing we in Germany realised in 2022 is that security does not only mean defence. It also means the security of our supply chains and energy supply. It means economic security. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine made us in Germany realise that we had allowed ourselves to become dangerously dependent on Russia for our energy supply and that we were dealing with a country which was willing to make ruthless use of this dependence as a geopolitical weapon. We faced a realistic scenario of a winter in Germany with factories at a standstill and homes unheated. That is why we took action.

And that is why the expansion of renewable energies is also a security factor. Germany and Japan already work together in these fields, for example in the offshore sector. My dear friends, I firmly believe that there is still great potential here.

Germany can learn a lot from Japan, particularly as regards looking critically at dangerous dependencies, reducing vulnerability and fostering economic resilience. Our security and freedom are at stake. But – and this is my third priority – so, too, is our prosperity.

Japan was the first country in the world to create the position of Minister of State for Economic Security. It is a pioneer of a term that has now become a buzzword: de-risking. Fifteen years ago, Japan experienced how a trade partner wanted to virtually monopolise the export of critical raw materials in its own interest. In response, Japan drew up its own strategy on economic security and made huge investments in the diversification of its raw materials imports.

Export controls for high-tech goods are another area where we can learn a great deal from each other. Japan has worked hard to ensure that key technologies such as AI, semiconductors, robotics and biotechnology do not end up unintentionally in the hands of competitors who do not have to face market competition. Our German-Japanese intergovernmental consultations in 2023 led to the creation of a Division for Economic Security at my own ministry. Furthermore, in the raw materials fund we want to set up in Germany, we are following a path paved by Japan.

And this also involves the key driver of digital transformation and the AI revolution, namely semiconductors. Japan is leading the way with the highly ambitious Rapidus Corporation project in Hokkaido. Rapidus Corporation is not even three years old, but is already producing the very latest microchips. We want to deepen our partnership in this field because we can learn from Japan about economic security. We want to discuss our experiences, but we also want to get our companies involved.

Our bilateral economic security dialogue, whose next meeting is to take place here in Tokyo in October, will be a key forum for this. We already see many successful examples of cooperation between German and Japanese companies today, such as the Japanese truck subsidiaries of Toyota and Daimler, which merged in June. By merging, both partners are not only increasing their competitiveness on the Asian market, but also joint investment in the decarbonisation of exports. I am convinced that there is still enormous potential for ensuring and deepening our cooperation on economic security, but also on crucial areas for the future such as green and digital transformation. In this regard, my delegation and I are particularly looking forward to visiting the Japanese Expo representative tomorrow.

Ladies and gentlemen, prosperity on our planet and in our two countries is based on cooperation and trade. Japan is Germany’s second-largest trading partner in Asia. Exchange with Japanese partners helps to drive innovation in German companies.

However, the conditions for trade and cooperation are under huge pressure worldwide. The pillars of economic policy on which our prosperity is based are crumbling, not only because authoritarian states are exploiting economic dependencies for their own geopolitical ends or because military conflicts are causing important trading routes to be blocked, but also because we are experiencing how a disruptive tariffs policy is adversely affecting established trade relations and thus threatening global prosperity.

As the third and fourth largest economies in the world, Germany and Japan are naturally also export nations. Our countries need reliable trade relations and support open markets at the international level.

This is not to cheat others or to get rich at their expense, but because we know that when free trade runs fairly, it creates greater prosperity for all. It gives consumers greater choice. It challenges companies to remain competitive worldwide. And it ultimately creates the best prices for the people in our countries, and thus the greatest prosperity.

My dear friends, our countries lie on opposite sides of the globe, but they are so close in terms of shared values and also, I believe, in the challenges we face, as well as in our priorities in an uncertain world. Freedom, security and prosperity are not abstract terms, but rather shared tasks that unite us. Let us undertake these tasks as friends and partners. Our friendship is a foundation on which we can build extensively with courage, trust and a clear vision for the future. Thank you very much for listening.