For Mr Yoshikawa, 2026 marks his seventh year as an entrepreneur in China. It is also the year he and his wife welcomed their first child in Shenzhen. “Sometimes, I feel a deep sense of uncertainty,” Yoshikawa told me. Like many Japanese entrepreneurs in China, he finds himself living between two sharply different realities, trying to make sense of both at once. Politically and militarily, Japan confronts China with its toughest stance yet.