How proactive? How pacifist? Charting Japan’s evolving defence posture

ABSTRACT

After 60 years maintaining Self-Defense Forces rather than a normal military, Japan is moving towards exercising collective self-defence, long restricted by interpretations of its 1945 Peace Constitution. The merits of Prime Minister Abe Shinzo's ‘proactive pacifism’ are intensely debated by those welcoming greater international contributions from Japan and others suspicious of Japanese ‘remilitarisation’. A nation’s defence posture can theoretically be hijacked by aggressive nationalists, shift to pacifist isolationism, or rely on non-military internationalism or multilateral security cooperation. This article assesses competing explanations about the post-war trajectory of Japan’s defence posture by charting variation in military doctrine and capabilities. The analysis finds that Tokyo has made incremental policy adjustments under domestic and international constraints, and is not aggressively remilitarising.

KEYWORDS:

• Asian regional security
• defence policy
• Japanese politics
• military doctrine and capabilities
• nationalism
• US–Japan alliance

Acknowledgements

This research benefited from not-for-attribution interviews with officials from Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Ministry of Defense, as well as academics and security policy analysts in Tokyo, Seoul, Honolulu and Washington, D.C. The author expresses appreciation to Susan Pharr and Akira Iriye for comments on an earlier draft, to Youngshik Bong, Daniel Ghirard, Tetsuo Kotani, Adam Liff, Aki Mori, Crystal Pryor, Ryo Sahashi and anonymous reviewers for constructive feedback, and to Mihwa Seong and Yena Shin for excellent research assistance.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Leif-Eric Easley (PhD, Harvard University) is Assistant Professor in the Division of International Studies at Ewha Womans University and a Research Fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies.

ORCiD

Leif-Eric Easley http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3950-0411

Notes

1. Useful sources, in Japanese, address concerns about abandoning pacifism (see Yanagisawa 2015); Japan’s international role under ‘proactive pacifism’ (see Gaikou 33, September 2015); and the constitutionality of the security legislation (see Kokusaimondai 648, January 2016). For criticism of the security legislation, see Journalism 301, June 2015.

2. For details of Japan’s missions abroad, see ‘Japan’s Contributions to International Peace’, http://www.pko.go.jp. In addition to these SDF deployments, Japan has provided election observers, humanitarian officials and aid workers to other countries, including Rwanda, Turkey and India.

3. This may be understood as a two-level game where US ‘pressure’ (gaiatsu) helped Japanese politicians move forward with planned policies they would have otherwise found difficult to pursue (see Schoppa 1993).