Introduction

Abstract

Is Japan on a path towards assuming a greater military role internationally, or has the recent military normalisation ground to a halt since the premiership of Junichiro Koizumi? In this book, Christopher W. Hughes assesses developments in defence expenditure, civil–military relations, domestic and international military–industrial complexes, Japan's procurement of regional and global power-projection capabilities, the expansion of US–Japan cooperation, and attitudes towards nuclear weapons, constitutional revision and the use of military force.

In all of these areas, dynamic and long-term changes outweigh Japan's short-term political logjam over security policy. Hughes argues that many post-war constraints on Japan's military role are still eroding, and that Tokyo is moving towards a more assertive military role and strengthened US–Japan cooperation. Japan's remilitarisation will boost its international security role and the dominance of the US–Japan alliance in regional and global security affairs, but will need to be carefully managed if it is not to become a source of destabilising tensions.

Notes

For examples arguing for a gradually more assertive Japanese military role, see Michael J. Green, Japan's Reluctant Realism: Foreign Policy Challenges in an Era of Uncertain Power (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2001); Anthony DiFilippo, The Challenges of the US–Japan Military Arrangement: Competing Security Transitions in a Changing International Environment (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2002); Gavan McCormack, ‘Remilitarizing Japan’, New Left Review, vol. 29, September–October 2004, pp. 29–44; Jennifer Lind, ‘Pacifism or Passing the Buck? Testing Theories of Japanese Security Policy’, International Security, vol. 29, no. 1, Summer 2004, pp. 92–121; Richard Tanter, ‘With Eyes Wide Shut: Japan, Heisei Militarization, and the Bush Doctrine’, in Mel Gurtov and Peter Van Ness (eds), Confronting the Bush Doctrine: Critical Views from the Asia-Pacific (London: Routledge, 2005), pp. 153–80; Christopher W. Hughes, ‘Japan: Military Modernization in Search of a “Normal” Security Role’, in Ashley J. Tellis and Michael Wills (eds), Strategic Asia 2005–06: Military Modernization in an Era of Uncertainty (Seattle, WA: National Bureau of Asian Research, 2005), pp. 105–34; Daniel M. Kliman, Japan's Security Strategy in the Post-9/11 World: Embracing a New Realpolitik (Westport, CT: Praeger/ CSIS, 2006); Kenneth B. Pyle, Japan Rising: The Resurgence of Japanese Power and Purpose (New York: Public Affairs Books, 2007); Richard J. Samuels, Securing Japan: Tokyo's Grand Strategy and the Future of East Asia (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007).

For examples arguing for continued strong Japanese resistance to further remilitarisation post-11 September, see Thomas U. Berger, ‘Japan's International Relations: The Political and Security Dimensions’, in Samuel S. Kim (ed.), The International Relations of Northeast Asia (Lanham, MD: Rowman Littlefield and Publishers, 2004), pp. 135–69; H. Richard Friman, Peter J. Katzenstein, David Leheny and Nobuo Okawara, ‘Immovable Object? Japan's Security Policy in East Asia’, in Peter J. Katzenstein and Takashi Shiraishi, Beyond Japan: The Dynamics of East Asian Regionalism (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2006), pp. 85–107; Paul Midford, ‘Japanese Mass Opinion Toward the War on Terrorism’, in Robert D. Eldridge and Paul Midford (eds), Japanese Public Opinion and the War on Terrorism (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 11–42; Andrew L. Oros, Normalizing Japan: Politics, Identity and the Evolution of Security Practice (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2008); Yasuo Takao, Is Japan Really Remilitarising? The Politics of Norm Formation and Change (Clayton: Monash University Press, 2008).

For examples arguing for Japan's long-term remilitarisation post-Koizumi, see Gavan McCormack, Client State: Japan in the American Embrace (London: Verso, 2007); Testuo Maeda, Jieitai: Henyo no Yukie (Tokyo: Iwanami Shinsho, 2007); Christopher W. Hughes and Ellis S. Krauss, ‘Japan's New Security Agenda’, Survival, vol. 49, no. 2, Spring 2007, pp. 157–76.

Christopher W. Hughes, Japan's Reemergence as a ‘Normal’ Military Power, Adelphi Paper 368/9 (Oxford: OUP for the IISS, 2004).

The literature on militarisation and militarism is well established in social science, drawing on rich and diverse insights from political science, sociology, social anthropology, economics and international relations. For overall statements of the classical indicators of remilitarisation, see Alfred Vagts, A History of Militarism (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1959); Kjell Skjelsbaek, ‘Militarism, Its Dimensions and Corollaries: An Attempt at Conceptual Clarification’, Journal of Peace Research, vol. 16, no. 3, 1979, pp. 213–29; Volker R. Berghahn, Militarism: The History of an International Debate, 1861–1979 (Leamington Spa: Berg Publishers, 1981); Martin Shaw, Post-Military Society: Militarism, Demilitarization and War at the End of the Twentieth Century (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1991). For debates on civil– military relations and the indicators of remilitarisation, see Harold D. Lasswell, ‘The Garrison State’, American Journal of Sociology, vol. 46, no. 4, 1941, pp. 455–68; Samuel P. Huntington, The Soldier and the State: The Theory and Politics of Civil–Military Relations (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 1964); Morris Janowitz, The Professional Soldier: A Social and Political Portrait (New York: The Free Press, 1971); Samuel E. Finer, The Man on Horseback: The Role of the Military in Politics, 2nd edition (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1988). For the concept of the military-industrial complex, see Rosa Luxemburg, The Accumulation of Capital (London: Routledge, 1961); Joseph Schumpeter, Sociology of Imperialism (New York: Meridian, 1955); C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1956); Jerome Slater and Terry Nardin, ‘The Concept of a Military- Industrial Complex’, in Steven Rosen (ed.), Testing the Theory of the Military- Industrial Complex (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1973), pp. 27–60; Mary Kaldor, The Baroque Arsenal (London: Andrei Deutsch, 1982); Dan Smith and Ron Smith, The Economics of Militarism (London: Pluto Press, 1982); Keith Krause, Arms and the State: Patterns of Military Production and Trade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992).

For a history of Japan's self-declared constraints on remilitarisation, see Glenn D. Hook, Demilitarization and Remilitarization in Contemporary Japan (London: Routledge, 1996).