Persistent gray-zone maritime activity, including a tripling of Chinese research vessel surveys in Japan's EEZ around the Senkaku Islands through September 2026 and repeated coast guard face-offs, has not escalated into direct military confrontation. Both governments continue prioritizing calibrated signaling over kinetic force, backed by economic interdependence, alliance deterrence involving the United States, and established crisis-management protocols that have contained prior incidents. Traders assign 95.5% probability to no clash before 2027, reflecting this pattern of controlled pressure. A realistic shift could still arise from miscalculation during live-fire drills or patrols, a Taiwan contingency drawing Japanese forces into direct engagement, or abrupt breakdown in bilateral communication channels.