Japan reveals its military might
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Japan has been quietly pouring billions into rebuilding its military, says Australian academic BRIAN VICTORIA . It’s even considering going nuclear
By BRIAN VICTORIA
UPDATED AT 12:30 PM EDT Thursday, Jun. 5, 2003
Within weeks, Japan’s parliament is expected to give swift passage to three bills that will effectively alter the pacifist constitution that has guided the island nation since the end of the Second World War. The moves are alarming China and North Korea. And they are serving notice that Japan is thinking once more of declaring its military strength – already far bigger than most people realize.
At the end of the Second World War, the victorious Allies, led by the United States, determined that like Germany, Japan would never again be allowed to become a military threat. Article 9 of the postwar Japanese constitution stated, “The Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation. . . Land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained.”
Despite having been imposed by the United States, Japan’s postwar “Peace Constitution” resonated deeply with most Japanese people, who by the time of their nation’s defeat in August, 1945, had been at war, mostly in China, since 1931, resulting in nearly three million military and civilian casualties.
However, little more than a year after the new constitution took effect, the United States began to systematically dismantle the constitution’s “no war” provisions, which it had initially insisted on. This reversal came with the advent of the Cold War, as the United States realized that Japan’s strategic location made it critical to the battle against communism throughout Asia. The growing strength of the Japanese left also threatened the long-term viability of U.S. bases in that country.
The first step in Japan’s rearmament began with a secret National Security Council decision in 1948 authorizing the creation of a 150,000-man “national police force,” whose duties included protecting U.S. bases in Japan and U.S. military dependants. With the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, a 75,000-member National Police Reserve was added. It was the first step toward what the United States hoped would become a force of 300,000, commanded by former Imperial Japanese officers and ready to deploy to Korea if needed.
The Japanese government initially rejected both the larger force and its deployment to Korea. However, after the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951, it agreed to enter into a military alliance with the United States, allowing U.S. bases to remain in Japan indefinitely. As well, it pledged to “increasingly assume responsibility for its own defence against direct and indirect aggression” – violating the spirit, if not the letter, of Article 9 of its constitution.
From then until now, there has been a concerted effort, fostered by both the Japanese and U.S. governments, to restore Japan to the status of a modern military power, albeit one firmly under U.S. military control and tied to its strategic objectives.
By 1973, Japan’s armed forces, euphemistically designated as “self-defence forces” (jieitai), had already become the seventh strongest in the world. Yet, without nuclear weapons of its own, Japan remained ultimately dependent on the U.S. nuclear umbrella.
Today, Japan has 240,000 men and women under arms. Having spent nearly $50-billion (U.S.) a year on defence for each of the past five years, Japan has a force, at least in terms of funding, second only to the U.S. (Russia can no longer afford a modern military). Yet Japan does all this while preserving a constitution that states: “The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.”
To ascribe Japan’s steady military buildup solely to U.S. pressure would be wrong; there have always been Japanese political leaders who loathed what they saw as the emasculating provisions of the peace constitution. However, despite repeated attempts, they have as yet failed to persuade a majority of Japanese voters to eliminate Article 9 through constitutional revision. Frustrated, they instead effectively nullified its provisions through the employment of euphemisms, subterfuges and incremental changes.
Not surprisingly, Japan’s ruling conservative party recognizes that without nuclear weapons, Japan will remain dependent on the United States. In a highly controversial statement, Yasuo Fukuda, chief cabinet secretary in Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s government, expressed dissatisfaction with this state of affairs on May 31, 2002: “Inasmuch as we have now reached the stage of discussing constitutional revision, it may well be that, depending on changes in the international situation, the people of Japan will decide that we ought to have nuclear weapons. . . . I think there is nothing written in the constitution or in legal theory that states we cannot possess such weapons.”
Even Japan’s main opposition leaders now share those sentiments. In April, 2002, Liberal Party leader Ichiro Ozawa claimed that Japan could easily produce “thousands of nuclear warheads” in response to China’s growing military might. “If China gets too inflated,” he noted, “the Japanese people will get hysterical. It would be easy for us to produce nuclear warheads – we have plutonium. If we get serious, we will never be beaten in terms of military power.”
As Mr. Ozawa’s remarks suggest, it is China’s military and economic power that in the long-term is fuelling the debate on Japan’s possible acquisition of nuclear weapons. Thanks to the exigencies of the Cold War, Japan has never fully admitted, let alone atoned for, the atrocities committed by its troops in China during the Second World War. Japanese government officials have consistently denied such barbarities as the 1937 Rape of Nanking or the use of biological weapons to kill as many as 250,000 civilians and 12,000 PoWs.
Although China is perceived as posing a long-term threat, the more immediate danger comes from a nuclear-armed North Korea. It was this threat that only last month led the Japanese parliament’s lower house to pass three “war contingency bills.” They allow the Prime Minister to put the nation on a war footing even when there is no more than “fear that such an attack may occur.” As defence agency chief Shigeru Ishiba made clear during the parliamentary debate on these bills, this includes the possibility that Japan may launch a “pre-emptive strike” against any nation thought to be preparing to attack.
Japan’s military currently lacks offensive weapons, such as nuclear-capable Tomahawk cruise missiles. But it has begun to explore acquiring them. In the short-term, Japan will no doubt remain a firm ally of the United States and an active member of “coalitions of the willing.” However, should Japan ever choose the nuclear option in confrontations with China, the West may rue the day Japan was pressured to rearm.
Brian Victoria is senior lecturer at the Centre for Asian Studies at the University of Adelaide, Australia.
