Japan’s Takaichi pushes back against Russian supply pressure

U.S.-Japanese bilateral relations continue to drive headlines. U.S. President Donald Trump met newly-elected Japanese prime minister Sanae Takaichi in Japan in late October to shore up the decades-old alliance. The meeting took place just one week after Takaichi took office as Japan’s first female leader.

The backdrop of the meeting couldn’t have been timelier. As the war between Ukraine and Russia drags on past the three-and-a-half-year mark, Japan is caught in a triple squeeze between U.S. political pressure, Russian LNG supply reality and pending sanctions, along with domestic power cost fears.

During the summit, the two leaders praised each other at the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, congratulating each other for their respective leadership along with inking several new deals. These included an agreement for the U.S. to provide new-generation nuclear reactors and rare earth minerals to Japan. The deal also had a new geopolitical backdrop, coming as Japan seeks a way to export its nuclear technology to reduce China’s dominance over key electronic components, according to media reports.

What was missing at the meeting, however, were detailed discussions about Japan’s Russian oil and LNG imports. Takaichi reportedly did tell Trump that banning Russian LNG imports would be difficult, two Japanese government officials told Reuters at the time. There’s no other record about LNG discussions between the two leaders at the summit.

Notably, just two weeks earlier the Trump Administration reiterated a strong stance that Japan should stop all Russian fossil fuel imports. U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Japanese Finance Minister Katsunobu Kato that the Trump Administration expects Japan to stop importing Russian energy.  Bessent announced his position on X after the two met on October 15th. The two finance ministers met on the sidelines of the annual International Monetary Fund (IMF) meeting, and the G7 and G20 finance leaders’ gatherings held in Washington.

The U.S. isn’t the only country pressing Japan to pull back on Russian energy imports. The G7 also chimed in, with Tokyo at least tentatively agreeing, to phase out Russian oil imports in response to Moscow’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine. However, oil isn’t Japan’s top Russian fossil fuel import — LNG takes the top slot.

Japan imported $3.6 billion of Russian LNG in 2024, accounting for nearly two-thirds of its total fossil fuel purchases from Russia, according to World Bank trade value data. This sharply contrasts with crude-oil purchases: Russian barrels made up barely 0.1% of Japan’s total oil imports by mid-2024.

Western pressure

Despite Western pressure, Japan still accounted for around 18% of Russia’s total LNG exports in mid-2024. Last year, Russian LNG accounted for 9% of Japan’s LNG imports, underscoring how energy pragmatism continues to trump politics in the world’s second largest LNG-importing economy. Japan imported 67.72 million tonnes of the super-cooled fuel last year worth around $41 billion, according to The International Gas Union’s 2025 World LNG Report.

Japan often re-exports more than half that amount to secondary buyers and on the spot market, making its major utilities among the Asia-Pacific region’s leading resellers of the fuel. In fiscal year 2023/24, Japan’s LNG external trade (i.e. volumes sold to overseas markets) totalled 38.25 million tonnes, a record high, according to data from the Japan Organization for Metals and Energy Security. China was the world’s top LNG importer last year, taking in some 76.65 MT, according to Chinese customs figures.

An argument can also be made that Washington’s pressure on Tokyo to reduce Russian LNG imports serves its own commercial agenda. Japan’s largest power producer, JERA, recently became the latest Asian utility to sign a letter of intent with the US $44 billion Alaska LNG project.

On paper, the September 10th Alaska LNG deal looks like a win-win agreement — supply security for Japan and a symbolic export success for Washington. But beneath the surface, the arrangement appears driven less by energy needs than by geopolitical appeasement.

If the commercial maths is questionable, the political intent is clear. Both during his first term and again in his second, Trump has promoted the Alaska LNG project as a symbol of American “energy dominance.”

He’s also threatened tariffs on Japanese exports to push Tokyo toward greater U.S. energy purchases. Japan isn’t alone. Washington has applied similar pressure on South Korea, Vietnam, India, and Thailand and even on the EU, tying LNG imports to tariff relief. Such policies would lock in greenhouse-gas emissions for decades just as renewables become cheaper and more accessible, increasing the likelihood of stranded gas assets if global climate targets tighten.

Despite pressure from the U.S., Japan is still financially boxed in on Russian LNG. Long-term Sakhalin-2 contracts are cheaper and more stable than term LNG spot-market cargoes, where prices run around 30-50% higher. A weak yen and chronic trade deficit magnify the problem for Tokyo, leaving little fiscal room to absorb another energy shock. Keeping Russian supply isn’t politics for Japan its survival economics.

Asian market share

Russia’s LNG imports to Japan are part of Moscow’s larger aim to increase market share for the fuel in the Asia-Pacific region. That also includes ramping up more cargoes to China, the world’s top LNG importer and also a major reseller of the fuel in both Asia and Europe. According to Reuters, between January-August 2025, Russia exported 18.8 million metric tons of LNG globally, of which 9.5 MT went to Asia.

“Russia’s LNG to China is nothing new, and China pretends they take the U.S. seriously but I am not convinced China takes the U.S. sanctions really seriously,” London-based gas specialist and former associate fellow at Chatham House, Keun-Wook Paik, told Gas Outlook. 

“Russia has every reason to continue their LNG supply to China, and China has no reason to refuse if the offered price is attractive enough. The crux of the matter is the competitiveness of the offer price. If the incentive is good enough, the Chinese buyer will not reject the LNG offer from Russia. Chinese are born capitalist when it comes to money making, and that will not change,” he said. 

(Writing by Tim Daiss; editing by Sophie Davies)