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I served for 3 years in Sasebo Japan on shore duty at our US naval base and ammunition facility there. There are a lot of dynamics in the situation there:

We gave the Japanese their Constitution which limits Japan to a small Self-Defense Force. And Prime Minister Abe has been pushing the Japanese people to build up their armed forces and modify the law.
Indeed the self-defense force is very weak. As far as naval forces go, they have no aircraft carriers, for example. What limited military infrastructure they have is purchased from the US.
Historically Japan has always been a warrior nation. They experienced a long feudal period with lots of civil wars and bloodshed. And once they were forced to move into the modern era and abandon the samurai government, they quickly adapted and became a world military power -- as we well-know. And that's precisely what the Chinese and Koreans now fear.
The people are naturally competitive. Very similar to Americans: they take their sports seriously and love winning.
Technically, Japan is fully capable of being a strong military power. They have a very active space program that has sent spacecraft around the moon. They have also sent a spacecraft to land on and retrieval rocks from an asteroid and return those rocks to earth (landing in a remote area of Australia). When they buy fighter aircraft from us, they modify the aeronautics and send suggestions back to the US manufacturers for improvement.
Japanese nationals perform 90% of the maintenance and repair work on our ships and military facilities there. And the US government pays for that. I see no reason why a lot of that work couldn't be done by American workers living in Japan at naval bases. Japan is a great place to live, so it would be a highly prized overseas assignment.
Owing to the utter tyranny of the Japanese government during World War II -- and the disastrous results of that war, Japanese are afraid of military power and highly suspicious of it. As a result, the armed forces in Japan are not treated with proper respect by the populace.

I think a strong Trump presidency would force Japan to make the necessary transition to picking up their fair share of the defense load. So this will actually help Abe to go where he wants to go. Without America pushing for change, however, nothing is going to happen.

Below is the naval base in Sasebo...

What a fantastic post!

Agreed with EVERYTHING you wrote (very well), except for:

When they buy fighter aircraft from us, they modify the aeronautics and send suggestions back to the US manufacturers for improvement.

Alas, the great majority of JASDF a/c are not purchased off-the-shelf, though that is what I would prefer:

Most are licensed produced, generally to a higher quality than the American originals. More and more they are co-developed, a process that involves MUCH more transfer of know-how. I agree with your notation of their habit of suggesting improvements --they are amazing manufacturers, improvers, and increasingly, innovators.

I love Japan in a BILLION ways, but I'm not sure we want to make Japan into an aerospace competitor, and I don't think such measured reservations constitute "Japan-bashing".

Both presuppose that they were both at one time OURS in some sense to lose or abandon --I richly contest that.

I find a great many Western people arrive in Japan, see the technology and living standard, deeming it somehow WESTERN. Well, there is hip-hop, there are movies, yes. Maybe those are western.

But for anyone who really spends time there, there are a bazillion ways in which Japan is not only different, but maybe the OPPOSITE --that escapes the casual visitor.

I think there are people whose livelihood is tied up in minimizing change in Japan as lackeys of their Establishment and that is a role unhelpful not only to the outside world, but ultimately to Japan herself.

I did a refit in Sasebo many years ago.

It's one of the finest shipyards I've ever seen. They got us out of there 2 weeks ahead of schedule and tossed in a couple of things, not minor, to boot.

I took a carton of Marlboro's and a 5th of Jack out on the town to a bar and traded it for a full week's worth of beer and Santori.

It's the first place I ever saw Karoke and thought it was the weirdest thing I ever saw.

I just love how people spout off about things they know nothing about. Japan pays a greater share of the cost of hosting out military than most of our allies.

Access to shipyards and aircraft depots, at Japan's expense.

Payment of overseas allowances and COLAs for U.S. service members.

Base construction projects and housing

Fuel for American aircraft when at Japanese bases.

Japan is not freeloading. Facts can be such pesky things when they get in the way of your rhetoric.