Yeah, the lack of local accountability was a large part of why Trump “threatening” to pull the military out of Japan was a monumentally stupid bluff. Japanese people already hate the US military, because the average Japanese person’s perception of the US military is “drunk dude causes damage/hurts someone and flees back to base where he will never see any punishment.” It also came at a time when hardline conservatism and patriotism (bordering on jingoism) is increasingly popular in Japan. Japan basically went “fucking do it then.”