IT IS certainly timely. Japan’s cabinet this week approved the country’s first-ever national-security strategy. This comes just weeks after China declared a new air-defence information zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea, covering the disputed islands that Japan calls the Senkakus and China the Diaoyus. This has heightened already acute tensions over the islands, and the new strategy amounts to a distinct hardening of Japan’s defence posture.

The strategy argues that Japan needs to make a more “proactive contribution to peace”—ie, to contribute more to its military alliance with America, despite its pacifist constitution. It refers not just in general to “complex and grave national-security challenges”, but specifically to China’s “attempts to change the status quo by coercion”, and to the need to be able to “recapture and secure without delay” remote islands that have been invaded. America condemned China’s announcement of the ADIZ. But it did not publicly call for the zone to be rescinded. This played on fears in Japan that America might not honour its assurances that the security guarantee covers the tiny, uninhabited Senkakus.

The strategy amounts to a plan for a five-year military build-up. Spending will increase to ¥24.7 trillion ($240 billion), an increase of about 5% over the previous five-year plan. The number of personnel in the Self Defence Forces (SDF), as the army is known, will remain the same. The new money will buy hardware.

The new kit is intended to strengthen Japan’s control of the sea and air around the disputed territory: seven more destroyers (making 54 in all), for example, and six more submarines (making 22). A second unit of 20 F-15 fighter jets will be deployed on Okinawa, near the islets, along with early-warning aircraft, and the SDF will add unmanned drones to its air force. And Japan will for the first time form its own version of America’s Marine Corps.

The document, which Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, calls “historic”, promises that Japan will respond “calmly and resolutely to the rapid expansion and step-up of China’s maritime and air activities”. It also fingers North Korea as a “grave and imminent threat”. It calls for the cultivation of “love of country” in Japan, and for “expanding security education” in universities. Controversially, it also promises to review Japan’s self-imposed ban on arms exports, blamed for keeping costs high by obliging the local defence industry to produce in relatively small quantities.

One important omission, however, showed restraint. Many politicians from Mr Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party have been advocating a “first-strike” capability against missile bases, to prevent a possible North Korean attack. Japan will not yet take this step, which would alarm Japan’s neighbours—notably China and South Korea—more than anything else in the strategy. But though this looks like a five-year plan, it is subject to redefinition each year. The idea of building a first-strike-capable force is still on the table for 2014, according to a government official.

When the strategy was first published, China’s foreign ministry accused it of “hyping the China threat”. It was further incensed by remarks made by Mr Abe at a summit in Tokyo with leaders from South-East Asia on December 13th-14th. He suggested that his guests, four of whose countries have territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea, should consider the ADIZ a matter of concern for the entire region. China’s foreign ministry accused Japan of “malicious slander”. Especially galling was that the South-East Asians probably thought Mr Abe was right.