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Japan's Drive for Military Greatness in the Lengthening Shadow of US-China Confrontation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Gavan McCormack
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Abstract

A little over 75 years ago, a Japan-designed Asia-Pacific community collapsed, leaving not only Japan, but much of the region, in chaos. Millions were dead, with cities left in ruins. Important lessons the world—and many Japanese people—took from the catastrophe of the Asia-Pacific War and the demise of the Japanese Empire were incorporated in the American-crafted constitution of Japan that took effect one year later, which pledged under Article 9 that Japan would forever renounce “war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes,” adding that “land, sea, and air forces … will never be maintained.” That pledge remains, unrevised but steadily emptied of content, and the 1946 aspiration to create a new kind of state, one resting on the “peace” principle, has been largely forgotten. Over subsequent decades, the US, which had imposed Article 9 on an occupied Japan, came to regret its recrafting of Japan as a “peace state,” and began steadily exerting pressure on it to revive and expand its military. Thus, with US encouragement, Japan has, over time, indeed built formidable land, sea, and air forces, evading constitutional proscription by calling them “Self-Defence” forces (rather than Army, Navy, and so on).

Keywords

Japanese ConstitutionArticle 9the Self-Defence Force and a new Japanese militarismOkinawa and the danger of war in the First Island ChainUS-Japan conflict with China.
Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 21 , Issue 6 , June 2023 , e2
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2023

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References

Notes

1 Ministry of Defense, Government of Japan, National Defense Strategy, 16 December 2022; Yuka Koshino, “Japan's transformational national security documents,” International Institute of Security Studies, Online analysis, 21 December 2022. https://www.iiss.org/online-analysis/online-analysis/2022/12/japans-transformational-national-security-documents/

2 Nick Allen, “Japan to spend $480b to boost its firepower,” Sydney Morning Herald, 19 December 2022.

3 Iida Masahiro, “Teki kichi kogeki noryoku to anpo hosei,” Sekai, April 2022, pp. 50-61.

4 For further details on Mage and Yonaguni, see my The State of the Japanese State (Renaissance Books, 2018) at pp. 155-157 (Mage) and 149-154 (Yonaguni), and Konishi Makoto, Jieitai no Nansei shifuto (Shakai hihyosha, 2018).

5 For the base construction design: “Mageshima kichi koji' sagyo-in shukusha o tonai ni 3,000 shitsu cho sechi e,” Minami Nihon Shimbun, 11 February 2023. On the ongoing struggle between the base project endorsing mayor and the civic opposition, Konishi Makoto, “‘Mageshima’ o meguru shicho to shimin no kumon,” Okinawa Times-plus, 27 January 2023, https://www.okinawatimes.co.jp/articles/-/1092536.

6 McCormack, pp. 149-150.

7 For a comprehensive account of the “shift to the southwest,” Ogata Osamu, “Okinawa/Nansei shoto, kyugeki ni susumu misairu kichika,” Nomoa Okinawa sen nuchi du takara, Bungei shicho, No 87, 19 April 2023, http://nomore-okinawasen.org/7820.

8 Xiao Liang and Nan Tian, “The proposed hike in Japan's military expenditure,” SIPRI (Stockholm International Peace Research Institute), 2 February 2023.

9 “Taiwan yuji wa Nihon yuji,” “Abe moto shucho ga Taiwan no shinpo de,”Asahi Shimbun, 1 Decemer 2021.

10 Gavan McCormack, “Global Agendas 2022 – NATO and RIMPAC, Asia Pacific Journal - Japan Focus, 1 July 2022. See also Tom Hazeldine, ”The North Atlantic Counsel, Complicity of the International Crisis Group,“ New Left Review, 63, May-June 2010.

11 Handa Shigeru, “Shin anzen hoshoron,” No 59 “Tsukaikata sae wakarazu 'bakubai'suru tomahoku,” Shukan kinyobi, 24 March 2023, p. 28.

12 C. Douglas Lummis, “Japan declares Okinawa a ‘combat zone’ in possible war with China,” Pearls and Irritations, John Menadue, 15 March 2022.

13 See my “Ryukyu/Okinawa's trajectory from Periphery to Centre, 1600-20015,” Sven Saaler and Chrisopher W.A. Szpilman, eds, Routledge Handbook of Modern Japanese History, Routledge, 2018, pp. 118-134.

14 On the Okinawan aspiration for a peace-rooted and base-freed East China Sea identity, see Satoko Oka Norimatsu and Gavan McCormack, Resistant Islands: Okinawa Confronts Japan and the United States, Lanham, Maryland, 2nd edition, 2018.

15 Amaki Naoto, “Tai-chu jishu gaiko ni kaji wo kitta Okinawa no dai eitan to Okinawa no shonenba,” Amaki Naoto no meru magajin, 1 April 2023, https://foomii/00001.

16 The Whte House, “Joint Statement of the United States and Japan,” 13 January 2023. https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2023/01/13/joint-statement-of-the-united-states-and-japan/

17 Daniel Hurst, “Nato planning to open Japan office to deepen Asia-Pacfic ties – report,” The Guardian, 3 May 2023.