Closing Libraries, Digging Shelters — The Tradeoff Between Defense Expansion and Cultural Budget Cuts
Defense spending at ¥8.7 trillion, the Agency for Cultural Affairs at ¥106 billion. In FY2025, when defense outpaced education spending by 2.1x, Japan approved a national shelter construction plan. Shelter coverage stands at 370% in Taiwan, 107% in Switzerland, and just 5% in Japan. This article examines the structural asymmetry of protecting citizens from missiles while defunding protection against poverty, information gaps, and social isolation.
TL;DR
- In FY2025, Japan's defense budget reached ¥8.7 trillion — 2.1 times education spending — while the Culture Agency budget remains 1/80th of defense
- Japan's shelter coverage is just 5% for underground facilities, compared with 370% in Taiwan and 107% in Switzerland
- Austerity-driven library and museum closures in the UK and US have disproportionately harmed the most economically vulnerable communities
What Is Happening
Defense expansion and cultural budget cuts are occurring simultaneously, with shelter construction and library closures running in parallel internationally
In fiscal year 2025, Japan's defense-related expenditure reached ¥8.7005 trillion. An increase of approximately ¥750 billion from the prior year, bringing the figure to roughly 1.8% of GDP. Since fiscal year 2022, when defense spending stood at ¥5.4 trillion, the budget has expanded by approximately ¥1 trillion annually.
In that same fiscal year, education-related expenditure amounted to approximately ¥4.1275 trillion. Defense spending had grown to 2.1 times the education budget. The Agency for Cultural Affairs' annual budget stands at a mere ¥106.2 billion — roughly one-eightieth of the defense budget. Visualized, the asymmetry in scale becomes stark.
×2.1Defense spending is approx. 2.1x education, 82x the Culture Agency budget
* Defense: Ministry of Defense; Education: Ministry of Finance general account; Culture Agency: Agency for Cultural Affairs budget overview.
On March 31, 2026, the Cabinet approved a basic policy for securing "shelters" against missile attacks. The stated objective is to ensure sufficient facilities at the municipal level to accommodate all residents by 2030. Yet at present, underground facilities — those with meaningful effectiveness against missile strikes — number only approximately 3,900 nationwide, covering roughly 5% of the population.
Taiwan has constructed approximately 105,000 shelters with capacity to accommodate roughly 370% of its population. Switzerland maintains approximately 370,000 shelters built during the Cold War, covering 107% of its population. Finland covers approximately 85% of its population across 50,000 shelters, with 83% equipped with NBC (nuclear, biological, chemical) filtration systems.
* Japan's 5% covers underground facilities effective against missile attacks only. Including all 61,000 designated sites, most are above-ground structures.
Investing in infrastructure to protect citizens from missiles possesses its own security rationale. The problem lies in the simultaneous erosion of cultural infrastructure, funded from the same fiscal base.
Background and Context
Documents the reality of cultural facility cuts under austerity in the UK and US, alongside the structural context of shelter programs worldwide
Cultural Infrastructure Under Siege
Japan's national museums and art institutions face an existential threat. The Agency for Cultural Affairs has set a target under the next medium-term plan (from FY2026) requiring national museums and art institutions to achieve a self-generated revenue ratio of 65% or higher. Failure to meet this threshold could trigger restructuring reviews, including potential closures. The ultimate objective is a self-revenue ratio of 100% — meaning zero operating grants.
Public libraries, too, are quietly contracting. Japan has 3,297 public libraries, but materials acquisition budgets have been flat to declining at approximately ¥35 billion per year. As of FY2022, 674 libraries have adopted the designated manager system, and persistent criticism holds that cost-reduction-oriented management undermines the accumulation of specialized knowledge and institutional continuity.
The UK Precedent
The United Kingdom has experienced the consequences of cultural facility cuts in advance of other nations.
Since 2010, local authority spending on public libraries has been cut by approximately 50% in real terms. The cumulative reduction amounts to £329 million after inflation adjustment. Since 2016, approximately 125 libraries have been physically closed in England, with a further 100 transferred to community groups. Even accounting for 75 newly established libraries, the net result is a loss of 150 libraries.
The distribution of these closures demands attention. The most deprived local authorities experienced closure rates four times higher than the least deprived. The disappearance of libraries inflicted concentrated damage on those communities most in need of information access.
The impact on museums and cultural institutions has been equally severe. Local authority spending on culture and leisure in England has been reduced by £2.3 billion since 2010, with the expenditure share falling from 7.4% to 4.5% — effectively halved.
The IMLS Abolition Shock in the United States
In 2025, the Trump administration issued Executive Order 14238 directing the "maximum abolition" of IMLS (Institute of Museum and Library Services). All but 12 of approximately 75 staff members were placed on administrative leave, and federal grants already committed to libraries in California, Connecticut, and Washington were subject to early termination.
According to the ALA (American Library Association), IMLS's annual budget of approximately $250 million had been the infrastructure undergirding internet access and vocational training in rural and low-income areas. Its abolition threatened to deepen the digital divide in communities already experiencing severe information access disparities.
Attorneys general from 21 states filed suit. In November 2025, a federal district court in Rhode Island ruled the administration's actions unlawful. In April 2026, the administration withdrew its appeal, bringing the crisis toward resolution. However, during this period, New York City's three public library systems (NYPL, Brooklyn, Queens) sustained $58.3 million in budget cuts alongside $125 million in capital plan reductions — the most severe cuts in 16 years.
The Invisible Defense Libraries Provide
Libraries are not mere book-lending facilities. As Japan's Ministry of Education defines them, they serve as "centers of information and knowledge for local residents" — social infrastructure serving all inhabitants from children to the elderly.
A study of the San Diego Central Library (2019, n=63) found that in the six years following the hiring of a clinical social worker, over 150 individuals secured permanent housing, while 800 received other forms of assistance. Research by the NEA (National Endowment for the Arts) has documented positive correlations between the presence and use of libraries and museums and community health indicators, educational outcomes, and employment. These effects are more pronounced in rural areas.
These functions constitute defense against poverty, defense against information inequality, and defense against social isolation. Yet in the hierarchy of budget priorities, such "invisible defense" is treated as incomparably less important than defense against missiles and military threats.
Reading the Structure
Examines the asymmetry in the question of what citizens are protected from, and the paradox of dual-use public cultural facilities
Consider the numbers once more. Defense: ¥8.7 trillion. Education: ¥4.1 trillion. Culture Agency: ¥106.2 billion. Shelter coverage: Taiwan at 370%, Japan at 5%. These four figures articulate the present Japanese state's answer to a foundational question: what are citizens to be protected from?
The first structural issue is the asymmetry of protection embedded in the budget. The increase in defense spending is justified by changes in the security environment: China's military expansion, North Korea's ballistic missile launches, Russia's invasion of Ukraine. Strengthening defense capability in response to these geopolitical risks carries policy rationale. But if the process of securing those funds systematically erodes cultural infrastructure, it reveals that the definition of "security" itself is too narrow. Protecting bodies from missiles constitutes security. Does the loss of access to knowledge, information, and culture not constitute insecurity?
The second structural issue is the paradox of dual-use facilities. Japan's shelter design philosophy embraces repurposing existing underground spaces — subway stations, underground shopping arcades, parking structures — to serve both peacetime public functions and wartime shelter needs. Extending this "dual-use" logic leads to a recognition that libraries and museums are themselves "infrastructure for protecting citizens" in peacetime. As the San Diego case demonstrates, libraries have served as bases for homelessness outreach, spaces for vocational training, and points of social contact for isolated elderly individuals. They constitute a different species of "shelter" — the nucleus of social defense in times of peace.
The third structural issue is the irreversibility of cuts. What the British experience teaches is that once a library closes, it rarely reopens. Buildings are repurposed, collections dispersed, and specialists move to other professions. How many decades would it take for England to recover the 150 libraries lost over a single decade — or is recovery simply impossible? The research capabilities accumulated by museum curators, the conservation and restoration expertise for artworks, the records of local cultural heritage — all represent "invisible assets" that cannot be reconstructed once lost. Shelters can be dug given sufficient budget. But cultural accumulation forms only through time and sustained human endeavor.
The Nordic countries offer one reference point. Finland's per-capita library spending stands at 60.1 euros, approximately six times that of Germany. Simultaneously, Finland maintains civil defense shelters covering 85% of its population. Nations exist that invest in both cultural and military infrastructure rather than treating them as a zero-sum trade.
"What are we protecting citizens from?" The answer to this question is already written in the budget numbers.
Related Columns
- 'Fund Museums with Public Money' — What's at Stake in a Country Spending 0.02% of GDP on Culture
- Japan's Welfare Capture Rate — The Safety Net That Doesn't Reach
- At the Intersection of Climate Change and Social Inequality
References
FY2025 Defense Budget Overview — Ministry of Defense, Japan. Ministry of Defense
FY2024 Agency for Cultural Affairs Budget Overview — Agency for Cultural Affairs. Agency for Cultural Affairs
Cabinet Approves Shelter Policy for Municipal-Level Full Coverage — Jiji Press. Jiji Press
Federal Council wants to modernize ageing shelters due to wars — swissinfo.ch. swissinfo.ch
IMLS Cuts Put America's Public Libraries at Risk — American Library Association. ALA
£232 million cut to UK public libraries since 2010 — Public Libraries News. Public Libraries News
Homelessness at the San Diego Central Library: Assessing the Potential Role of Social Workers — E. Burns, K. C. Land. PMC
