tag:theconversation.com,2011:/id/topics/japan-self-defence-forces-38814/articlesJapan Self-Defence Forces – The Conversation2018-01-19T02:07:26Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/902272018-01-19T02:07:26Z2018-01-19T02:07:26ZTurnbull’s Tokyo visit draws Australia and Japan’s defence forces closer<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/202514/original/file-20180118-158546-17murmm.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Turnbull government appears determined to intensify Australian involvement in the Asia-Pacific's strategic rivalries.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Frank Robichon</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s first overseas visit for 2018, to Japan, was highlighted by a summit with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his national security council in which North Korea was consistently mentioned as the main danger. </p>
<p>However, the underlying implication of Turnbull’s visit for the now-annual security dialogue is the interest shared by Japan and Australia in countering the strategic rise of China. The defence ties that have been steadily intertwining over the past two decades between Japan and Australia are now likely to strengthen even further.</p>
<h2>Security and the global environment</h2>
<p>As part of his one-day tour, Turnbull visited a Japanese Self-Defence Force (SDF) base near Tokyo. There, he inspected American-supplied PAC-3 missile interceptors and four Australian-built Bushmaster armoured troop carriers purchased by Japan, with four more ordered. </p>
<p>The troop carrier purchase is Australia’s largest defence export. Its success could lead to more deals on defence industry co-operation, assisted by the Japan-Australia Economic Partnership Agreement. </p>
<p>Improved information-sharing on counter-terrorism was <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-18/malcolm-turnbull-sceptical-of-north-south-korea-unification-flag/9339748?section=world">on the agenda</a>. The Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, which Australian and Japan still support, was <a href="https://www.pm.gov.au/media/address-japan-australia-business-cooperation-committee-lunch">also discussed</a> with business representatives.</p>
<p>The summit was another upgrade to a long-running series of security agreements. There has been direct co-operation between Japanese and Australian forces since the 1990s, starting in UN peacekeeping missions in Cambodia and East Timor. There’s also the important precedent of a joint stabilisation force <a href="https://medium.com/war-is-boring/ten-years-ago-japan-went-to-iraq-and-learned-nothing-b7f3c702dd1f">in Iraq</a> from 2004 to 2006.</p>
<p>The <a href="http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/asia-paci/australia/joint0703.html">Japan-Australia Joint Declaration on Security Co-operation</a> was signed in 2007, and an Information Security Agreement and the Acquisition and Cross-Services Agreement came into force in 2013. A “special strategic partnership” came into effect in 2014, raising Japan’s status second only to the US in Australia’s bilateral defence relations.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://foreignminister.gov.au/releases/Pages/2017/jb_mr_170807b.aspx">Trilateral Strategic Dialogue</a> has also been conducted between Australia, Japan and the US since 2002. The latest leaders’ meeting between Turnbull, Abe and US President Donald Trump was <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-trump-asia-australia-japan/trump-meets-japan-australia-leaders-over-trade-north-korea-threat-idUSKBN1DD09V">held at the sidelines</a> of the last year’s ASEAN summit.</p>
<h2>The wider strategic environment</h2>
<p>As the Australia-Japan defence relationship has deepened, there has been <a href="https://www.stripes.com/news/elite-japanese-paratrooper-unit-joins-talisman-saber-drills-for-the-first-time-1.478500">relatively small-scale SDF participation</a> in previous Australian-US exercises, such as Talisman Sabre, and joint naval manoeuvres. </p>
<p>A significantly increased tempo and size of military exercises involving Japanese forces could now be expected in the Northern Territory’s training areas, where rotating units of the US military have been based since 2011.</p>
<p>A joint statement released after Abe and Turnbull’s meeting confirmed that a Status of Forces Agreement <a href="https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2018/01/18/national/politics-diplomacy/abe-turnbull-agree-boost-defense-ties/#.WmE3wXmYPX4">is being negotiated</a> to allow Australian forces to begin training at Japanese bases. This would be the first such agreement for Japan with a country other than the US. </p>
<p>If concluded, this agreement would be the prelude of a significant shift in Australia’s strategic doctrine. It would prepare Australian forces to train – and potentially conduct military operations – alongside Japanese and US forces in northeast Asia for the first time since the end of the Korean War in 1953.</p>
<p>Turnbull’s visit also suits Abe’s agenda for changing Japan’s Constitution by the end of the year to respond to the North Korean missile threat, and strategic rivalry with China (and, to a lesser extent, with Russia). </p>
<p>The Abe government plans to have Japan’s Self-Defence Forces formally cited in Article 9 of the Constitution. <a href="https://www.nippon.com/en/currents/d00374/">Critics fear</a> this move will be a pretext to greater overseas deployment in joint operations with friendly countries.</p>
<p>Controversial security bills passed in 2015 allow the SDF to participate in collective self-defence. This can include mutual logistics support between Australian and Japanese forces, such as transport of ammunition and supplies. Abe’s cabinet is already exploring the purchase of cruise missiles from the US, and the<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/dec/19/japan-buys-us-missile-defence-system-to-counter-north-korean-threat"> deployment</a> of an “Aegis Ashore” anti-ballistic missile system.</p>
<p>Abe’s ruling coalition still controls a comfortable two-thirds majority in parliament after the lower house election last October. Backing for constitutional change is also likely to also come from the new opposition Party of Hope, led by Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike – a defence minister in Abe’s first administration. </p>
<p>The main opposition Constitutional Democratic Party, and the Japanese Communist Party, are determined to halt any change to Article 9. They are backed by a <a href="https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2018/01/7a542d80cbf9-update1-abe-cabinet-support-rate-up-54-against-constitution-revision-poll.html">consistent majority of public opinion</a>.</p>
<p>While the Australia-Japan security relationship does not quite yet reach the level of an alliance, which would require military assistance to each other if attacked, it has nevertheless moved another step closer. </p>
<p>The Turnbull government shares the mutual US and Japanese opposition to China’s island-building and territorial claims in the South China Sea. Australia also effectively backs Japan’s possession of the disputed Senkaku Islands, while <a href="https://www.pm.gov.au/media/doorstop-ministry-defense-and-japan-ground-self-defense-force-jgsdf">diplomatically claiming</a> not to take any sides in these disputes.</p>
<p>Turnbull’s visit comes soon after <a href="https://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20180115/p2g/00m/0dm/068000c">reports</a> that China sent a nuclear-powered attack submarine on patrol in Japan’s territorial waters near the Senkaku Islands. Commentators are <a href="http://www.scmp.com/comment/insight-opinion/article/2128381/how-australia-should-respond-chinas-growing-role-pacific">already warning</a> Australia’s closer defence ties with Japan will worsen relations with China, particularly in light of the recent disputes over alleged Chinese political influence in Australia, and criticism of China’s aid program in the Pacific.</p>
<p>Turnbull’s visit was therefore a clear signal that the bilateral relationship between Australia and Japan is increasingly important in the strategic rivalry of the Asia-Pacific. The Turnbull government appears determined to intensify Australian involvement in it.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/90227/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Craig Mark does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The underlying implication of Malcolm Turnbull’s Tokyo visit was the interest shared by Japan and Australia to counter the strategic rise of China.Craig Mark, Professor, Faculty of International Studies, Kyoritsu Women's UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/858302017-10-17T04:44:37Z2017-10-17T04:44:37ZStrengthened Xi and Abe could help moves toward peace in our troubled region<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190554/original/file-20171017-5056-197fn83.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption"></span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>They may not be co-ordinated, nor linked in any way. But two events in Asia over the next week will help define Australia’s political and security environment for the next period.</p>
<p>First is the convening of the five-yearly Communist Party of China congress. This gets underway on Wednesday with a much-anticipated “work report” from party boss Xi Jinping.</p>
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<p>Second is the Japanese elections scheduled for October 22. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is bidding to become the longest-serving leader of his country. He seems determined to enlarge Japan’s security footprint by continuing to beef up its defence forces and seek changes to its pacifist post-war constitution.</p>
<p>From an Australian perspective, the North Korean nuclear crisis invests both the reaffirmation – and strengthening – of Xi’s leadership for another five years, and the re-election of Abe, with particular importance.</p>
<p>A glance at the factsheets compiled by the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade underscores the overwhelming economic importance of <a href="http://dfat.gov.au/trade/resources/Documents/chin.pdf">China</a> and <a href="http://dfat.gov.au/trade/resources/Documents/japan.pdf">Japan</a> to Australia’s wellbeing.</p>
<p>In 2016, China ranked first and Japan second as a destination for Australian merchandise trade exports. Trade in services to China ranked first, and Japan ranked eighth.</p>
<p>Japan’s economic and security importance to Australia tends to be underplayed. But it’s worth noting that Japanese investments in Australia are more than double China’s.</p>
<p>Xi’s signature statement to the party congress assumes critical importance given China’s expanding global leadership amid concerns about the Trump administration’s commitment to such a role. Each word and sentence will be parsed for its implications for regional and global security, and for the direction in which he plans to take the world’s second-biggest economy over the next five years.</p>
<p>This will be a speech – given the circumstances of China’s continued rise – that will rank with a US presidential State of the Union address.</p>
<p>The party congress will stretch over the best part of a week, and will be closely observed for indications of Xi’s continuing efforts to strengthen his grip on China’s leadership. As things stand, he has emerged as the most powerful Chinese leader since Deng Xiaoping.</p>
<p>Given his relative youth in Chinese leadership terms, the 64-year-old Xi may well be ruling for the next decade – in other words an additional five-year term past 2017 to 2022. This is well past a nominal retirement age of 68.</p>
<p><a href="http://carnegieendowment.org/2017/10/16/19th-party-congress-and-chinese-foreign-policy-pub-73432">In a paper</a> for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Michael Swaine painted a generally optimistic picture of China’s continued evolution under a dominant Xi. However, he also acknowledged that China’s continued rise would inevitably result in tensions over:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… trade, investment, sovereignty rights, and a variety of anxieties involving Chinese and US or Japanese military forces in the Western Pacific.</p>
<p>There’s no doubt Xi and the Chinese leadership are seeking to more effectively use China’s growing international presence to promote the nation’s interests in such sensitive. As a result, tensions with China will in fact likely increase.</p>
<p>The good news is that, rather than marking a turn toward confrontation between China and the West and Japan, the 19th Party Congress will likely signal a high level of stability and continuity in Chinese foreign policy. The bad news is that this continuity is unlikely to reduce the most serious challenges facing China’s relations with the United States and its allies.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>In all of this, Japan’s importance in regional security calculations is likely to come more sharply into focus in the next period. This is investing Abe’s likely re-election with a super majority in the Diet in partnership with his Komeito allies with more-than-usual significance.</p>
<p>Latest opinion polls are predicting a <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-japan-election/japanese-media-surveys-show-abes-election-gamble-could-pay-off-idUKKBN1CH0FH">surprisingly big win</a> for the Abe-led Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) after indications he may have been struggling against the New Hope Party, which was formed on the eve of the election campaign by Tokyo Governor Yuriko Koike.</p>
<p>According to a poll in the Yomiuri newspaper and Kyodo news agency, the LDP-led coalition is on track to win 300 or more seats in the 465-member lower house. This would be an improvement on its standing in the previous parliament.</p>
<p>If the Abe-led coalition is returned with a substantial majority, he is likely to push forward with attempts to revise Japan’s pacifist post-war constitution to enable a clearer definition of Japan’s military to enable it to assert itself militarily – if necessary.</p>
<p>Such a development would have implications for Australia’s growing <a href="https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/australia-japan-relationship-worthy-more-reflection">security relationship with Japan</a>. This partnership has not attracted much attention, but it has been substantial and evolving since a Joint Defence and Security Agreement was struck in 2007.</p>
<p>The two countries have progressively upgraded a bilateral Acquisition and Cross Services Agreement that enhances interoperability between the Australian Defence Force and the Japanese Self-Defence Force. Australia and Japan have also declared a Special Strategic Partnership aimed at strengthening security ties in the Indo-Pacific.</p>
<p>What’s driving closer defence co-ordination between the second world war protagonists is concerns about China’s rise, and the implications for a regional power balance. This would seem to be a prudent course.</p>
<p>In the aftermath of the Communist Party congress and the Japanese election, with Xi and Abe’s positions enhanced, it might be reasonable to assume that the sometimes-tense relations between China and Japan will take a turn for the better. Concerns about instability on the Korean Peninsula should provide a catalyst for greater co-operation, and a lessening of tensions over territorial disputes.</p>
<p>An early opportunity for a show of amity will come at next month’s APEC forum in Vietnam. This will also be attended by US President Donald Trump.</p>
<p>Abe is thought likely to press China for a long-delayed summit with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and South Korean President Moon Jae-in. North Korea would be a focus of those discussions. For its part, China is anxious that Japan lend its weight to the China-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.</p>
<p>One indication that Abe is anxious to improve ties with China is that no cabinet ministers in Abe’s party visited the Yasukuni Shrine on the August 15 anniversary of the war’s end. China has previously angrily protested these visits.</p>
<p>From an economic perspective, close attention will be paid to statements by Xi and others at the party congress on China’s GDP growth targets and economic priorities for the next five years. Indications from the first half of this year are that China’s growth will exceed a 6.5% target for 2017. The economy has been strengthening in the second half of this year thanks, in part, to a construction boom.</p>
<p>But China’s debt-to-GDP ratio remains a significant concern. In the first quarter of 2017 total debt to GDP reached 257.8%. This is up from 187.5% five years ago.</p>
<p>In the end, China-watchers will be animated by personnel shifts in the Chinese leadership evidenced by announcements of a newly constituted Central Committee, Politburo, and, most importantly, Standing Committee of the Politburo.</p>
<p>When these personnel shifts are unveiled they will reveal the extent to which Xi has strengthened his power over the party apparatus, and thus over China. The betting is this will be a win-win for Xi.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85830/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
They may not be co-ordinated, nor linked in any way. But two events in Asia over the next week will help define Australia’s political and security environment for the next period. First is the convening…Tony Walker, Adjunct Professor, School of Communications, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/848762017-10-04T12:12:41Z2017-10-04T12:12:41ZProfile: Japan’s controversial, shrewd and ambitious Shinzo Abe<p>As Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe campaigns in a snap election, he looks set to enter into an unprecedented third term in office, and become Japan’s <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/list-of-prime-ministers-of-Japan-1812632">longest serving postwar prime minister</a>. So who is he? What is the secret to his success? And why is he both so fervently supported an – and intensely hated?</p>
<p>Even before he became prime minister, Abe was notorious for his family links to a suspected war criminal, <a href="https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2012/12/26/national/formed-in-childhood-roots-of-abes-conservatism-go-deep/#.WdIND7pFyUk">Kishi Nobusuke</a>, and for his dubious connections with groups on Japan’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/03/16/world/asia/japan-shinzo-abe-scandal-ties-right-wing-organization.html">political far right</a>. </p>
<p>Since his first stint in office (2006-7), he has been at the forefront of pushing for a hard line against North Korea, and championed the cause of abductees whom Pyongyang <a href="http://lite-ra.com/2016/04/post-2133.html">kidnapped from Japan</a>. He has not shirked at visiting the controversially nationalistic <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-25518166">Yasukuni Shrine</a>, despite outrage from China and both Koreas. And above all, he has pushed for the modernisation and internationalisation of Japan’s military.</p>
<p>Under the buzzword “proactive peace”, this includes establishing overseas bases, training regional coastguards and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/30/japan-pm-overturn-pacifist-defence-policy-shinzo-abe">reinterpreting the constitution</a> to allow <a href="https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2016/03/01/national/politics-diplomacy/abe-cites-need-japan-fully-exercise-right-collective-self-defense/#.WdS_ABOPLBI">collective self-defence</a>, meaning it could use military force to defend other allied countries if they were attacked. If he could stretch his political might just far enough, Abe would go further by becoming the first postwar leader to actually revise the constitution. This could once and for all dispel Japan’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/japans-change-in-military-outlook-marks-the-end-of-a-peace-state-68864">longtime image</a> as a “peace state”.</p>
<p>On the domestic front, Abe has been equally proactive. His flagship project, dubbed “<a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/abenomics-and-japanese-economy">Abenomics</a>”, is pitched as a three-pronged strategy to lift Japan’s economy out of almost three “lost decades”. This centres on monetary easing, structural reform and fiscal stimulus. How well it has worked, though, remains the source of <a href="http://www.toha-search.com/keizai/abenomics.htm">much debate</a>.</p>
<p>What is clear is that Abe has justified a multitude of repressive, controversial and arguably unconstitutional moves and policies under the pretext of strong leadership. Under a new <a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/news/asia-pacific/2014/12/japan-state-secrets-law-protests-2014129231715292756.html">secrecy law</a>, public servants could go to jail for up to 10 years if they reveal anything deemed counter to national security interests; a heavy-handed approach to the media has seen Japan plummet in <a href="https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/04/27/national/japan-stays-72nd-world-press-freedom-list-last-g-7/#.WdS9wROPLBI">press freedom rankings</a>, and anti-terror conspiracy legislation even <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-40283730">outlaws some forms of wild mushroom picking</a> </p>
<p>But there is another side to Abe. Despite his stereotype, he is not simply a right-wing revisionist with a penchant for repression, militarism and nationalist chest beating. Abe is also a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/08/opinion/japan-where-populism-fails.html">shrewd politician</a>, and it’s his <a href="https://thediplomat.com/2017/06/shinzo-abe-ideologue-or-pragmatist/">pragmatism</a> that has really seen him sustain success.</p>
<h2>Playing the game</h2>
<p>First, he surrounded himself with a carefully selected and reshuffled pack of allies and counterparts. These he chose both to support his own agenda and appease his opponents. His fellow hardliner Tomomi Inada served as defence minister, while moderate Fumio Kishida became foreign minister. But Abe has no compunction about moving his ministers on when the time comes: he reluctantly but quickly <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2017/07/27/asia/tomomi-inada-japan-defense-minister/index.html">axed Inada</a> when she became embroiled in scandal, and reshuffled Kishida to a prominent new post to <a href="http://business.nikkeibp.co.jp/atcl/report/15/110879/080400718/">avoid alienating him</a>.</p>
<p>Second, Abe’s timing has been both good and lucky. He waited until a vacuum appeared in his own party to resurface and assume the leadership. He was lucky in coinciding this with a fractured and discredited opposition, against which he quickly surged to power with a popular vote and political mandate rarely enjoyed in the <a href="https://www.economist.com/news/21636467-shinzo-abe-wins-easily-weak-mandate-voters-romping-home">postwar era</a>. </p>
<p>Finally, Abe has managed to <a href="https://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2017/08/20/commentary/japan-commentary/koike-versus-abe-populist-politics-stakes/#.WdOTr7pFyUk">ride the global wave of populism</a> – albeit in moderate form and with a conservative twist. In this vein, he is a champion to his supporters. Abe is the man that has shown leadership where others failed to, preceding and succeeding five consecutive premiers before him who had lasted little more than a year each in office.</p>
<p>He has also been quick to welcome Donald Trump’s leadership and has moved Japan ever closer to the US, joining Trump in continuing to push for more stick and less carrot to be used against Kim Jong-un’s North Korea. And while avoiding making relations with his nearest neighbours any worse, his strategists have continued to encircle and pressurise China. This takes <a href="http://journals.rienner.com/doi/abs/10.5555/0258-9184-37.3.437?code=lrpi-site">concrete form</a> by way of a Japan Self Defence Force base in Djibouti, Japan Coast Guard training exercises in the East and South China Seas, and the fortification of Okinawa.</p>
<p>But how will Abe be remembered? His fans will no doubt claim he fulfilled his <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S5rhUHmPbZc">promise</a> to “take back Japan”. His opponents are still asking from where, and for whom it was “taken back”, if at all. Indeed, it’s hard to say whether or not Japan Inc. really is in better shape since Abe and his Liberal Democratic Party returned to power. But if the upcoming election proves anything, it will likely be that Team Abe’s dominance endures.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84876/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ra Mason does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>How did a man once suspected of dubious far-right sympathies end up on the threshold of a record third term?Ra Mason, Lecturer in International Relations and Japanese Foreign Policy, University of East AngliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/779492017-05-18T06:12:20Z2017-05-18T06:12:20ZShinzo Abe pushes ahead on constitutional reform amid heated debate within Japan<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169906/original/file-20170518-12257-1m4qyxl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The helicopter carrier Izumo sails out of Yokosuka.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Kyodo Kyodo</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>On May 1, the largest vessel in the Japanese Maritime Self Defence fleet, the vast helicopter carrier Izumo <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39768110">sailed out of Yokosuka</a>. Its mission was to escort the US naval contingent that was deployed off the Korean peninsula in response to <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-39943619">North Korea’s missile tests</a>. Two days later, on Constitution Day, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced that he intends to <a href="http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201705020042.html">amend the post-War</a> constitution to clarify the standing of the <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-34485966">Self-Defence Forces</a>. </p>
<p>Although these events seem relatively low key, they are of considerable significance in Japan and beyond. The Izumo’s deployment is the first time that Japan has contributed actively to an alliance operation. It is a significant step toward realising Abe’s ambitions for Japan to be able to operate in security terms as a country like any other. While articulating a specific vision for change to the constitution, however subtle, is a concrete commitment by Abe to use his considerable domestic political capital to revise the post-war document. </p>
<p><a href="http://japan.kantei.go.jp/constitution_and_government_of_japan/constitution_e.html">Japan’s constitution</a> was written in haste by the Americans during the postwar occupation. Its signature was a requirement of the surrender and it retains a number of important provisions. Most obviously, it turned the country from a dynastic empire into a conventional liberal democratic constitutional monarchy. </p>
<p>But its most unusual feature is Article 9. Often described as the pacifist clause, it renounces the use of force as a legitimate tool of statecraft and declares that land, sea and air forces as well as other “war potential” will never be maintained.</p>
<p>Yet Japan now has one of Asia’s most sophisticated defence forces and is among the world’s top-ten <a href="http://books.sipri.org/files/FS/SIPRIFS1604.pdf">military budgets</a>. In spite of language that seems unambiguous, within years of being inked Article 9’s meaning was being stretched. Now it is almost out of recognition.</p>
<p>The original intent was to remove the country’s capacity to return to the militarism of the 1930s. But over time Japan’s security circumstances changed and it needed some capacity to defend itself. To manage this without changing the constitution a practice known as ‘reform through interpretation’ began. This involved the Cabinet Legislation Bureau issuing interpretations of what was permissible. The most important step was to allow the creation of a standing military, known as the Japan Self-Defence Force. </p>
<p>Crucially, in the 1950s Japan’s Supreme Court accepted that Article 9 allowed for self-defence and it has not challenged the right of the Bureau to have <a href="https://www.loc.gov/law/help/japan-constitution/interpretations-article9.php">this interpretive function</a>. </p>
<p>Japan is now a wealthy liberal democratic country that operates within the norms of contemporary international society. It has a large and capable military and it exists in a region that is increasingly turbulent. North Korea presents an immediate and acute security threat, and in the longer run China presents a profound challenge the underlying strategic balance. </p>
<p>Within the constraints of prevailing laws and norms the country wants to be able to do more to defend its interests. Abe’s aim is to reconcile those realities with its constitution. And given how much twisting and stretching that has occurred it is important align the law with the political and strategic reality. </p>
<p>Yet change is hugely controversial, even at the margins. This is, in part, because the constitution has not been amended since it came into effect in May 1947. Equally, the politics of constitutional revision is highly polarising. Any reforms can be painted as moves by the far right to wind the clock back and recreate Japanese imperialism. In turn, reformists tend to paint critics as naïve and oblivious to the real challenges Japan faces in an increasing contested Asia.</p>
<p>Abe’s position in this polarised debate is intriguing. Understandably, he presents a moderate face to the electorate about the scope of change and the reasons he gives for taking such steps. Abe has consistently argued that reform to the constitution is about normalising Japan’s military but retaining its <a href="http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/05/08/national/politics-diplomacy/japans-defense-only-posture-to-basically-remain-unchanged-under-proposed-constitutional-change-suga-says/">defensive posture and operating squarely</a> within the letter and spirit of international law. Yet he is closely associated with some of the country’s most right wing groups and indeed even members of his cabinet represent overtly revisionist views. </p>
<p>The Constitution Day announcement was made to an event linked to the conservative Nippon Kaigi group. <a href="http://apjjf.org/2016/21/Mizohata.html">Nippon Kaigi</a> advocates for a new constitution based on Japan’s “traditional characteristics” and wants to put the Imperial family at the centre of Japan’s identity. This makes convincing the public, which <a href="https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2017/04/0a59661f0654-corrected-japan-divided-over-revising-article-9-amid-n-korea-threats-poll.html">remains sharply divided</a> about the need for constitutional reform, that much harder.</p>
<p>Japan’s constitutional debates are not only a question of domestic politics. They are keenly watched across the region. Any moves tend to draw a splenetic response <a href="http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/video/2014-07/02/c_133455889.htm">from Beijing</a>, while Koreans tend also to oppose any shift, however subtle, from the status quo. This exacerbates already strained relations between America’s two key allies. In contrast, Washington has for many years been keen for Japan to play a greater strategic role and contribute more to sustain the prevailing regional order. </p>
<p>In many respects, Japan’s constitutional debate is a microcosm of Asia’s international order. It reflects a basic mode of operation now past its use-by date. But any move to adjust it in response to changing circumstances is frightening because of the possible instability and risk inherent in moves to the unknown.</p>
<p>Abe plainly wants to change the constitution. His ultimate aim is the transformation of Japan’s international role from dependent ally to a significant force upholding the liberal rules based order in Asia. If the current regional order is to be sustained he will need to be successful. But he knows this will be a long and difficult path. </p>
<p>Shifts in Japan’s international environment have both prompted the move and provided a political context for the dominant Japanese politician of his generation to take those crucial steps. </p>
<p>The Izumo is currently touring the <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-navy-southchinasea-exclusive-idUSKBN16K0UP">South China Sea</a> and will take part in multinational exercises later in May. Expect to see this more often and expect Beijing to respond in kind.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77949/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<h4 class="border">Disclosure</h4><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nick Bisley is Executive Director of La Trobe Asia, a member of the Australian Institute for International Affairs' National Executive, a member of the Australia-India Institute's Board and part of the Advisory Board of China Matters. Each of these groups have received funding from Australia's federal government. </span></em></p>In many respects, Japan’s constitutional debate is a microcosm of Asia’s international order, relfecting a basic mode of operation now past it use-by date.Nick Bisley, Executive Director of La Trobe Asia and Professor of International Relations, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/770132017-05-16T06:37:30Z2017-05-16T06:37:30ZAs tensions in the region rise, Japan again debates its pacifist constitution<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/169056/original/file-20170512-32618-g0gvx3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Shinzo Abe has made his clearest statement yet on his ambition to alter the pacifist Article 9 of Japan's Constitution.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Peter Nicholls</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Japan could finally be gearing up for the first-ever change to its constitution. In a recent video address to a pro-constitutional revision lobby group on the Constitution Day public holiday, <a href="http://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/AJ201705020042.html">Prime Minister Shinzo Abe declared</a> “the time is ripe” to begin a debate on possible change.</p>
<p>This is the clearest statement yet of Abe’s ambition to alter the pacifist <a href="http://japan.kantei.go.jp/constitution_and_government_of_japan/constitution_e.html">Article 9 of the Constitution</a>. He set a target date of 2020, when he hopes Japan will “be born anew”.</p>
<h2>More deployments in a tense region</h2>
<p>Abe’s conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP)-led government returned to power in 2012. Since then, it has incrementally shifted Japan’s defence posture to be able to deploy the country’s potentially powerful Self-Defence Forces more widely within the limits of the force-restricting Article 9. </p>
<p>The only article under Chapter 2 of the Constitution, which is titled Renunciation of War, it says:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.
In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Legislation passed in 2015 reinterpreted Article 9 to allow the forces <a href="https://theconversation.com/japans-australian-sub-bid-fits-with-its-strategic-and-economic-transformation-48156">to assist allies</a> – particularly the US – in collective self-defence when needed.</p>
<p>The first such use occurred a few days before Abe’s Constitution Day announcement. Japan’s largest warship, the helicopter carrier Izumo, escorted a US Navy supply ship for a few days along the Pacific coast of Japan. </p>
<p>This was a purely symbolic gesture as there was no actual danger. But it was a clear <a href="http://asia.nikkei.com/magazine/20170504/Politics-Economy/Escort-mission-ushers-the-US-Japan-alliance-into-a-new-era?page=2">diplomatic statement</a>: Japan was now ready to assist the US in potential military action – especially aimed at deterring North Korea and, implicitly, China.</p>
<p>Another Japanese destroyer later joined the Izumo in its escort mission. This came in the wake of a potentially more hazardous deployment in April, when Japanese vessels and aircraft <a href="http://www.mod.go.jp/e/press/conference/2017/04/28.html">joined the USS Carl Vinson carrier battle group</a>, which the Trump administration had sent on a <a href="https://theconversation.com/attacking-north-korea-surely-donald-trump-couldnt-be-that-foolish-76144">provocative cruise</a> in the Sea of Japan. </p>
<p>The Self-Defence Forces have long held joint manoeuvres with US forces. These are permitted under the Constitution as training activity for self-defence. But this show of force in waters close to North Korea was a deliberate demonstration of Japan’s will to engage in combat alongside the US if necessary – should North Korea continue its latest series of ballistic missile tests.</p>
<p>Japanese warships <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/apr/12/japanese-warships-join-us-fleet-north-korea">also trained with</a> the US and South Korean navies in separate joint exercises in April. But these were not part of the recently concluded two-month large-scale manoeuvres between the US and South Korea. These annual exercises always engender reactive threats from North Korea. </p>
<p>Still, this latest crisis period gave the Abe government perfect justification – and an opportunity – to embark on a more determined path towards constitutional change.</p>
<h2>Political challenges</h2>
<p>In an interview following his video address, Abe suggested the Article 9 amendment would retain its war-renouncing clauses. But he said it would add a paragraph to formally stipulate the Self-Defence Forces’ existence to clarify their constitutionality. </p>
<p>Abe indicated the LDP would not put forward the controversial constitutional reforms it proposed in 2012. These would have replaced the Self-Defence Forces with “national armed forces”. Instead, the LDP <a href="http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0003676123">would seek a broad consensus</a> with other political parties.</p>
<p>In the first parliamentary debates following these statements, Abe rejected criticism from opposition parties that inserting a paragraph into Article 9 that clearly defines the Self-Defence Forces would enable deployment to armed conflicts overseas. </p>
<p>Abe said that since the war-renouncing clauses would be maintained, Japanese forces would not join wars abroad. <a href="http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/05/09/national/politics-diplomacy/abe-says-defining-sdf-revised-constitution-responsibility-generation/#.WRK6AtLyiUk">He claimed</a> many legal scholars consider the forces’ very existence unconstitutional – hence his motive for proposing constitutional change was merely to resolve this ambiguity, and therefore improve Japan’s overall security.</p>
<p><a href="http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20170502/p2a/00m/0na/011000c">The process</a> of constitutional change will first require selecting the relevant provisions – in this case, Article 9 – and having the parliament’s Research Commission on the Constitution draft revisions. </p>
<p>The revisions would then be screened by the Commissions on the Constitution of both houses of the parliament (Diet). These would be put to a vote at each commission, and then again at plenary sessions of each house, where at least a two-thirds majority in both would be needed to pass them.</p>
<p>A public referendum approving the amendment then has to pass by a simple majority of the electorate.</p>
<p>If the referendum is held after the Tokyo Olympics in 2020, it would also come after the next elections for the lower house, due by the end of 2018, and for the upper house, due in July 2019. </p>
<p>Abe will seek re-election as LDP leader in September 2017 for an unprecedented third three-year term. This would make him Japan’s longest-serving postwar prime minister, and give him the chance to finally oversee his long-desired goal of revising Article 9. </p>
<h2>Blocks on the way</h2>
<p>But the next scheduled increase in the consumption tax rate is due in October 2019. This unpopular measure could put the LDP <a href="http://mainichi.jp/english/articles/20170503/p2a/00m/0na/010000c">at risk of losing</a> the two-thirds majorities it commands in both houses of the Diet, with the support of minor parties and independents.</p>
<p>Although resisting constitutional change could become a rallying point for the opposition, Abe and the LDP will count on the opposition parties remaining in <a href="http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2017/05/04/national/politics-diplomacy/democratic-party-struggles-relevance-face-ldp-komeito-juggernaut/">their current torpor</a>. </p>
<p>The main opposition Democratic Party managed to garner a paltry 6.7% support rate in the <a href="http://www.nhk.or.jp/bunken/research/yoron/political/2017.html">latest opinion poll</a> by the national broadcaster NHK, compared to 38.1% for the LDP. And 45.7% did not support any political party, or were undecided.</p>
<p>But the <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2017-05-01/abe-sees-momentum-toward-changing-japan-s-pacifist-constitution">pacifist sentiments</a> of a majority of the Japanese people could be the greatest obstacle to passing any referendum. A <a href="https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2017/04/0a59661f0654-corrected-japan-divided-over-revising-article-9-amid-n-korea-threats-poll.html">recent Kyodo News poll</a> found 49% support for changing Article 9, with 47% against. But <a href="http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2017/05/13/commentary/japans-constitutional-rebirth-reincarnation/#.WRp0umjyiUk">another NHK poll</a> had only 25% for change, with 57% opposed. </p>
<p>Abe may have kick-started the debate on constitutional change with high hopes for success. But the outcome in 2020 is anything but certain this far out. Only if Article 9 is amended will we know whether Japanese governments will continue to push the boundaries of using the Self-Defence Forces even further.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/77013/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Craig Mark does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Shinzo Abe may have kickstarted the debate on constitutional change with high hopes for success. But the outcome in 2020 is anything but certain.Craig Mark, Professor, Faculty of International Studies, Kyoritsu Women's UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/688642016-12-22T13:12:40Z2016-12-22T13:12:40ZJapan’s change in military outlook marks the end of a ‘Peace State’<p>Thanks to the constitution imposed on its citizens by the US after the end of World War II, Japan has long been thought of by pacifists as a “<a href="http://groupspaces.com/pugwash/">Peace State</a>”. <a href="https://www.loc.gov/law/help/japan-constitution/article9.php">Article 9 of the constitution</a> states that: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>The Japanese people forever renounce […] the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>It <a href="https://www.loc.gov/law/help/japan-constitution/article9.php">goes on to state</a> that “land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized”. </p>
<p>In the 1950s, the Self Defence Forces were established, with US backing (but against a backdrop of strong national feeling against militarisation). Now a controversial new approach to military legislation has been <a href="http://www.cas.go.jp/jp/gaiyou/jimu/pdf/gaiyou-heiwaanzenhousei.pdf">heralded by Prime Minister Shinzō Abe’s government</a>. As of March 2016, the Japanese Self Defence Forces are allowed to engage in “collective self defence” and to come to the aid of an ally under attack.</p>
<p>This increase in scope for Japanese military actions overseas has been gained via controversial legislation passed last year, and introduced against the wishes of the majority of those polled in Japan and in blatant violation of the Japanese constitution. </p>
<p>Given that constitution’s very clear wording, it is perhaps not surprising that the Liberal Democratic Party-led government failed to gain support for a reinterpretation that would allow collective defence to be operationalised by land, sea and air forces overseas. Even its own appointed constitutional expert <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.jp/2015/06/04/no-to-collective-defense_n_7515718.html">ruled that such legislation would be unconstitutional</a>. Despite this, the government used its parliamentary majority to force the bill through parliament. </p>
<p>The idea of an apparently increasingly aggressive Japan is now being used as a political tool by commentators, politicians and peace activists. <a href="http://search.proquest.com/docview/1301909896?pq-origsite=gscholar">Some are persuaded</a> by accounts of <a href="http://wrap.warwick.ac.uk/42051/">rapid remilitarisation</a>, others by <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2015/08/18/should-japan-allow-its-military-to-fight-in-foreign-wars/japan-must-reject-isolationism">claims of over-exaggeration</a>. Either way, in terms of both military capability and intent, any attempt at a comparison between present-day Japan’s foreign policy of “<a href="http://www.mofa.go.jp/mofaj/gaiko/page22_000407.html">proactive pacifism</a>” and pre-war imperial expansion is not helpful.</p>
<p>But the fact that recent developments have been misread as a return to pre-war expansionism does not mean Japan’s current proactivity in its international security role is normal, legal or constitutional. </p>
<p>It is none of these things. </p>
<p>As such, the spotlight needs to be recast upon the current government’s actions. Attention must be drawn to Tokyo’s remarkable reinterpretation of the pacifist constitution, and its subversion of public awareness away from the full-scale of its various military activities.</p>
<p>In November 2016, Japanese Self Defense Force (JSDF) troops were again dispatched to the conflict-torn <a href="http://www.mod.go.jp/e/about/answers/sudan/">civil-war zone of South Sudan</a> as part of ongoing United Nations peacekeeping operations. Japan’s UN peacekeeping role has been <a href="http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2016/07/16/japa-j16.html">gradually expanded</a> for more than two decades, but this is the first time that JSDF forces are permitted to engage in combat, as part of what could be considered <a href="http://www.richmond.com/news/latest-news/ap/article_6de8b1ad-d722-5215-a3d1-06cd90aa3133.html">collective self-defence</a> under Abe’s new rules. Japanese troops now sit in the outskirts of Juba, ready to engage in belligerency if it can be framed as self or collective defence.</p>
<h2>Land of the rising military power</h2>
<p>Japan’s first military combat since World War II is <a href="http://www.j-cast.com/tv/2016/12/02285128.html">now a real possibility</a>. But the particular significance of its wider military presence in and around the Horn of Africa has <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/us-japan-military-djibouti-idUSKCN12D0C4">not been widely examined</a>. In particular, the setting-up and operation of an overseas base in Djibouti has been largely kept away from greater public scrutiny through the subtle use of moderate language and <a href="http://www.mod.go.jp/e/pressconf/2016/08/160815.html">deliberate down-playing of any controversy</a>. </p>
<p>Initially described as a “facility” rather than as a military base, air, land and sea-based forces are stationed in Djibouti as part of an active, ongoing and expanding anti-piracy mission in the Gulf of Aden. This offers a means by which Japan can both increase cooperation with alliance partners and potentially further project military power. The increase of Japan’s role in the region, therefore, represents an agenda well in excess of any claim of solely protecting its essential economic security. <a href="http://www.eia.gov/beta/international/country.cfm?iso=JPN">Japan relies heavily</a> on imports of oil, liquid gas and other vital goods from the Middle East.</p>
<p>Closer to home, despite international rulings that reject the legality of Japan fortifying its southwestern island chain with new military bases, these are being <a href="http://www.okinawatimes.co.jp/articles/-/62551">constructed throughout the Okinawan islands</a> – for both JSDF and American use. They have also mostly been imposed against local opposition via a judiciary that acts more like an arm of the government than as an independent pillar of constitutional democracy. </p>
<p>Tokyo’s current security activities all have a recurring, and potentially dangerous theme. They are designed to further integrate Japan’s defence capabilities into those of the US (which imposed the original non-military constitution) and its other allies. All of this is happening at a time when the US, under a Trump presidency, is likely to ask for more from Abe’s government by way of “burden sharing” in the security arena. </p>
<p>No matter how base facilities and peacekeeping missions are framed, if circumstances conspire unfavourably, Japan may now be drawn into some form of war-fighting. And as such, if it ever really existed, Japan as a Peace State is surely no more.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/68864/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ra Mason does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Combat could be on the cards for the first time in over 70 years.Ra Mason, Lecturer in International Relations and Japanese Foreign Policy, University of East AngliaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/481562015-09-28T03:45:38Z2015-09-28T03:45:38ZJapan’s Australian sub bid fits with its strategic and economic transformation<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/96345/original/image-20150928-17725-9e0y5t.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C128%2C4096%2C2452&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Through reinterpreting the constitution and bidding to build Australia's submarines, Shinzo Abe is leading Japan towards a more assertive strategic posture.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Kimimasa Mayama</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Japan’s pitch to supply Australia’s next generation of submarines became more competitive against its European rivals when the bidding Japanese consortium <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-25/christopher-pyne-japan-prefers-submarines-be-built-in-australia/6803840">conceded</a> it would build in Australia. If successful, this bid will complement the recent passage of controversial security bills and strengthen Japan’s defence ties with Australia.</p>
<p>The new legislation now permits the Japanese Self-Defence Forces (SDF) to exercise the right of collective self-defence, formally confirming a cabinet decision in July 2014 to reinterpret the constitution. They were passed by the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and Komeito Party coalition. It overcame the delaying tactics of the opposition parties, which led to <a href="https://news.vice.com/article/after-a-televised-brawl-japanese-lawmakers-vote-to-allow-military-to-fight-overseas">extraordinary scenes</a> of politicians brawling in the usually sedate Diet.</p>
<h2>The strategic imperatives</h2>
<p>Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the LDP were determined to pass the vote despite the largest <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/sep/16/japanese-anti-war-protesters-challenge-shinzo-abe">public protests</a> seen since the 1960s, led by a reinvigorated student peace movement. Opinion polls have consistently shown that the majority do not support the new laws. Large numbers of academics, lawyers and retired judges consider them <a href="http://mainichi.jp/english/english/newsselect/news/20150921p2a00m0na010000c.html">unconstitutional</a>.</p>
<p>The main opposition parties – the Democratic Party of Japan, the Japan Innovation Party and the Japanese Communist Party – have vowed to overturn the bills, pledging to co-operate to first win back control of the upper house in elections due next year. However, the splintered opposition faces a <a href="http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/09/26/national/politics-diplomacy/as-dust-from-security-bills-fight-settles-japan-opposition-not-abe-facing-crisis/#.Vgdd1Jc-49Z">formidable task</a> of regaining the electorate’s confidence if they are to have any chance of eventually winning government and repealing the bills.</p>
<p>Abe has just won his second and final three-year term as LDP president. This entrenches his position as prime minister and potentially allows him to <a href="http://www.nippon.com/en/genre/politics/l00124/">contest</a> the next lower house election, due in 2018.</p>
<p>China predictably criticised the security bills’ passage. But the US, the Philippines and Australian Foreign Minister <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/sep/19/julie-bishop-welcomes-japan-reforms-which-could-see-its-troops-fight-abroad">Julie Bishop</a> warmly welcomed it. Abe claimed the bills are needed to secure Japan in a more unstable world, and that they allow Japan to contribute more to international peace and security. </p>
<p>The new collective self-defence powers are likely to be <a href="http://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Economy/International-Relations/Japan-set-to-expand-SDF-role-in-S.-Sudan-from-May-under-new-laws">first exercised</a> to allow more robust rules of engagement for SDF peacekeepers in South Sudan. The bills’ main intent, though, is to upgrade the SDF’s operational capability to co-ordinate with its allies’ armed forces and so increase deterrence against the rising military power of China, which has an ongoing territorial dispute with Japan over the Senkaku Islands. </p>
<p>During the Diet debate on the bills, the SDF conducted brigade-size amphibious manoeuvres with US forces in California. It also participated in the Talisman Sabre <a href="http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2015/07/20/national/china-gets-box-seat-gsdf-contingent-joins-marines-aussies-storming-beach/#.VgdrSJc-49Z">military exercises</a> held in Australia with the US. </p>
<p>As part of this strategic reorientation, the Abe government has already eased export restrictions on military-related equipment – such as for communications and sensors, which have already been exported to the US and Britain. And if construction of its submarines in Australia proceeds, it will be Japan’s first postwar export of a major combat weapons system. </p>
<p>Japan is <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/05/27/us-japan-philippines-idUSKBN0OC0NM20150527">already transferring</a> coastguard patrol boats and maritime surveillance aircraft to the Philippines and Vietnam. This indicates its desire to support these key ASEAN countries in their territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea. </p>
<h2>The economic imperatives</h2>
<p>Hoping to move on from the unpopular security bills, Abe last week launched a reboot of “Abenomics”, with the goal of raising Japan’s GDP to 600 trillion yen by 2020. Abe <a href="http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0002446227">declared</a> there would be three new “arrows” in the Abenomics relaunch: </p>
<ol>
<li><p>a strong economy; </p></li>
<li><p>support for child rearing; and </p></li>
<li><p>enhanced social security. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>However, these shallow slogans, announced with little policy substance, expose how the Abe government’s domestic economic and social policy agenda has stalled. Japan’s planned government spending for 2015-16 is a record 102.4 trillion yen. The Bank of Japan’s annual quantitative easing of 80 trillion yen has seen Japan’s public debt <a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/09/03/uk-japan-economy-budget-idUKKCN0R31AO20150903">continue to rise</a> above 230% of its GDP. </p>
<p>Despite these huge stimulus measures, Abenomics has so far failed to break the Japanese economy out of its decades-long stagnation. Deflation <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/business-34355538">returned</a> for the first time in two years in August, at 0.1%, due to lower global oil prices and ongoing weak domestic demand. This followed a contraction of Japan’s economy by 0.4% in the April-June quarter. </p>
<p>Encouraging Japan’s defence industry to move further into export markets therefore supplements Abe’s hopes of reinvigorating the economy. Rising defence spending is a major component of this attempt at stimulating investment. Japan’s defence ministry has <a href="http://thediplomat.com/2015/09/japans-defense-ministry-wants-record-military-budget-for-2016/">requested</a> yet another record budget for 2015-16 of 5.09 trillion yen. This is a 2.2% increase on 2014-15.</p>
<p>If the Turnbull government decides to accept the Japanese submarine bid, apart from fulfilling a domestic political objective of securing Australian manufacturing jobs, it will be a major reinforcement of Australia’s deepening security links with Japan. It will also encourage Abe’s historic shift of leading Japan towards a more assertive strategic posture.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/48156/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Craig Mark does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>If construction of its submarines in Australia proceeds, it will be Japan’s first postwar export of a major combat weapons system.Craig Mark, Associate Professor of International Studies, Kwansei Gakuin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/452852015-08-13T20:30:15Z2015-08-13T20:30:15ZThe living ghosts of 1945 haunt Asia’s rival powers<p>Following the devastation of twin atomic attacks, Japan announced its unconditional surrender to the Allied forces on <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/august/15/newsid_3581000/3581971.stm">August 15, 1945</a>. Seventy years on from that momentous day, the war continues to haunt the peoples of East Asia. </p>
<p>In the West, it is often forgotten that 1945 marks the end of not only the second world war but also of a much longer period of political and social upheaval. When Japan <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor">attacked Pearl Harbour</a> in December 1941, it had been in open warfare with Chinese forces for <a href="http://www.britannica.com/event/Sino-Japanese-War-1937-1945">more than four years</a>. Japan had made Korea <a href="http://koreanhistory.info/japan.htm">a colony in 1910</a> and had taken control of what is now Taiwan [in 1895](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_invasion_of_Taiwan_(1895). </p>
<p>Japan was far from the only aggressive power in Asia. European empires had expropriated land and treasure from Asian peoples for hundreds of years. Defeat did not just mark the end of Japan’s imperial ambition, it was the beginning of the end for imperialism in Asia.</p>
<p>This political reality should make commemoration of 1945 a positive and forward-looking time for a region that is so dynamic and increasingly economically integrated. What might have been a time for the region to congratulate itself on how much it has achieved in the span of a human lifetime has instead become a point of very real tension among the region’s major powers. </p>
<p>This is in part because the war and its end created many of Asia’s <a href="http://www.fpri.org/articles/2000/06/flashpoints-east-asia-hot-hotter-hottest">flashpoints</a>. Korea was divided in a hasty meeting between Soviet and American military officers. The islands in the East and South China Sea are disputed precisely because colonisation and war made their political provenance extremely murky. </p>
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<h2>Where does Japan stand 70 years on?</h2>
<p>The underlying source of tension today lies in the politics of the past and in particular the sense that Japan has not fully accepted responsibility for its actions. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe signalled long ago that he would issue a statement to mark the anniversary. He appointed an <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/26/japanese-experts-meet-to-decide-statement-over-countrys-wartime-past">expert panel</a> in February to inform the speech, which <a href="http://the-japan-news.com/news/article/0002338823">provided its report</a> on August 6.</p>
<p>Prime ministerial staff have spent huge amounts of time and energy as they try to get the content and optics of the speech right. It is of such importance because of the messages it will send about what Abe is trying to achieve in Japan more generally. </p>
<p>It matters also because of what use will be made of these messages by others. Highly <a href="https://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2015/08/116_184409.html">critical responses</a> to the expert panel’s report from South Korea and China show how closely Japan is being watched and the level of political investment Korea and China have in Japan’s attitude to history.</p>
<p>The conservative Abe has made clear that he wants Japan to <a href="https://theconversation.com/as-hiroshimas-legacy-fades-japans-postwar-pacifism-is-fraying-45521">move on from the post-war political consensus</a>. Japan’s Constitution, hastily written by the Americans and forced on Japan as part of the peace settlement, strictly constrains Japan’s ability to use its military. Abe has continued the process of re-interpreting the text to allow Japan’s “Self-Defence Force” <a href="https://theconversation.com/japan-is-regaining-lost-military-muscle-and-the-us-needs-it-42277">to do more</a>, but it is plain that he would like to change the Constitution altogether. </p>
<p>Equally, Abe feels that Japan should no longer fixate on what it did wrong in the past and should instead be proud of the prosperous, peaceful and democratic country it has become. Perhaps most importantly, Abe comes out of a part of Japan’s political spectrum that feels it has apologised enough at this point in time. </p>
<h2>What will China make of it?</h2>
<p>The Communist Party of China has made humiliation at the hand of rapacious foreigners a fundamental part of modern Chinese nationalism, with Japan as the principal culprit. In the cruder parts of the Chinese media, Abe is portrayed as taking Japan back to the 1930s. His grandfather’s participation in wartime cabinets and role in slave labour operations in Manchukuo in the 1930s <a href="http://www.thehindu.com/news/international/world/abes-grandfather-shown-as-war-criminal/article5584542.ece">is painted</a> as an indelible stain on his character.</p>
<p>Abe’s statement thus has to try to reconcile his ambitions for Japan, his own political support base, which resents the apologetic tone of Japan’s relations with the world, with an increasingly assertive China, which will happily make the speech grist in the Communist Party propaganda mill. </p>
<p>The contents of the speech have already come in for extraordinary speculation. Analysts wonder what exact turns of phrase will be used and what these will signify about Japan’s approach to its past and future. Many wonder whether Abe will use the same words as the famous <a href="http://www.mofa.go.jp/announce/press/pm/murayama/9508.html">1995</a> and <a href="http://japan.kantei.go.jp/koizumispeech/2005/04/22speech_e.html">2005</a> speeches in which Japan acknowledged its aggressive colonialism. </p>
<p>The central issue is whether or not Abe will be contrite and apologetic. The signal from Tokyo so far is that he will reiterate the sentiments of the 1995 and 2005 statements and recognise Japan’s aggressive past, but he is unlikely to do enough to assuage critics at home and abroad.</p>
<p>China itself will mark the anniversary in bombastic style in Tiananmen Square. A massive military parade to mark the occasion of Japan’s defeat will be used to underline the nationalist credentials of the Chinese Communist Party and its successful stewardship of the country. The message will be clear: because of the party’s rule, China will never again be taken apart as it was in the past. </p>
<p>In 70 years, Asia has been transformed. The nations and peoples of the region have made huge advances, economically and politically. Yet notwithstanding the growing economic ties, the region is becoming increasingly nationalistic, as the anniversary shows so clearly.</p>
<p>Perhaps worryingly, this nationalism is paired with a growing militarisation of the region’s international politics. Defence spending is increasing dramatically and the emotional language of national identity is making the management of complex territorial disputes ever harder. </p>
<p>While we are not yet in touching distance of war, the region is taking clear and unmistakable steps towards a future of open geopolitical contestation. The anniversary of 1945 should serve as a sober reminder of what lies in store if military competition becomes Asia’s defining feature.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45285/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nick Bisley does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>In the West, it is often forgotten that 1945 marks the end of not only the second world war but also of a much longer period of political and social upheaval in Asia.Nick Bisley, Executive Director of La Trobe Asia and Professor of International Relations, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/422772015-05-27T05:37:33Z2015-05-27T05:37:33ZJapan is regaining lost military muscle – and the US needs it<p>After years spent delicately staying out of military disputes around the world, Japan is suddenly reasserting itself as a serious player in regional and international disputes – and America is ushering it along. </p>
<p>And while circumstances in Japan’s neighbourhood mean that the country needs to show more muscle, there’s an inescapable irony in seeing these two countries holding hands militarily.</p>
<p>After World War II, Japan <a href="http://www.loc.gov/law/help/japan-constitution/article9.php">renounced war</a> and outlawed the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes in <a href="http://www.loc.gov/law/help/japan-constitution/article9.php">Article 9</a> of its constitution. This set the stage for decades of explosive economic development on the home front.</p>
<p>Japan spent the postwar decades transitioning from military to economic power, with the US sheltering it under the <a href="http://www.mofa.go.jp/region/n-america/us/q&a/ref/1.html">Treaty of Mutual Co-operation and Security</a> that the two countries signed in 1960.</p>
<p>But now, with the Asia-Pacific region under intense pressure from the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the US-Japan alliance is reverting back to a more muscular and defensive posture.</p>
<p>Things hit a peak in April 2015, when President Obama reminded the Asia-Pacific – specifically the PRC – that the US and Japan’s mutual security treaty covers Japanese’s maritime disputes in the East China Sea. Therefore, America will defend the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/24/obama-in-japan-backs-status-quo-in-island-dispute-with-china">Senkaku Islands</a>, an uninhabited archipelago at the heart of a long-running territorial dispute with the PRC.</p>
<p>And now, America is standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Japan as the latter steps up both regionally and internationally, transforming back into the sort of power it had apparently decided never to be again. </p>
<h2>Revival</h2>
<p>In July 2014, Japanese PM Shinzō Abe and his cabinet <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/01/us-japan-defense-idUSKBN0F52S120140701">approved</a> a reinterpretation of Article 9, which granted the nation the right of collective self-defence. </p>
<p>Although Japan is the <a href="http://www.un.emb-japan.go.jp/topics/un_budget.html">second largest financial contributor</a> to the United Nations and has been sending troops on UN peacekeeping missions <a href="http://www.aspistrategist.org.au/reinterpreting-article-9-enhancing-japans-engagement-in-un-peacekeeping/">since 1992</a>, Article 9 has always limited Japan’s direct participation from any possible combat missions. Now the grey area is gone, and no misgivings have been raised by the US.</p>
<p>Seven months after the shift, Abe <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/02/world/departing-from-countrys-pacifism-japanese-premier-vows-revenge-for-killings.html?_r=0">took a strong stand</a> against Islamic State, calling for revenge after the capture and killing of two Japanese hostages. Such a bold statement is rare coming from Japan – and combined with the reinterpretation of Article 9, it suggests at the very least that Japan will engage in future peacekeeping missions in a more involved way that possibly participate in combat operations, especially if Islamic State is the target. </p>
<p>With this new assertiveness, Japan is starting to regain the status as a “normal” state. And this is shaking up the Asia-Pacific balance of power in a big way.</p>
<h2>Stand-off</h2>
<p>Besides the backup it gets from America, Japan’s new foreign policy posture enjoys substantial internal support. Abe’s programme of “<a href="https://theconversation.com/despite-abenomic-growth-japan-still-needs-reform-14447">Abenomics</a>” has actually made a pretty good job of bringing Japan’s stagnant economy back to its feet, and that was the main reason his administration was <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/afp-japan-pm-set-for-re-election-after-abenomics-poll-win-2014-12?IR=T">re-elected</a> last year. </p>
<p>Whether Abe took a strong stance on foreign policy was not a main consideration when the Japanese voted. But as Abe’s domestic legitimacy improves, he and his cabinet are getting more licence to engage in international affairs and regional maritime disputes, and responding to the PRC’s maritime belligerence with a strikingly belligerent tone. </p>
<p>Even though the PRC is testing the red lines of maritime disputes with <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-28322355">oil drilling in Vietnam’s exclusive economic zone</a>, various <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-pacific-11225522">vessel collisions near the Senkakus</a> and its recent <a href="http://uk.reuters.com/article/2015/05/20/uk-southchinasea-usa-idUKKBN0O50T420150520">land-reclamation work</a> around reefs in the South China Sea, the party-state has backed off or at least stopped escalating hostilities when it has pursued these aggressive actions.</p>
<p>Clearly, Beijing is not yet prepared to trigger full-scale hostilities with even relatively weak states like Vietnam, never mind an ever more muscular Japan. But if the party-state continues with its red line tests, and the maritime disputes it insists on inflaming could blow the fuse on the region’s fragile stability. After all, nearly every state in the Asia-Pacific has at least one maritime dispute with its neighbours rumbling away. </p>
<p>Yet America chooses to engage with Japan to a level that could possibly upset Washington’s other alliances across East Asia. The growing US-Japanese alliance is clearly intended to counterweight the PRC, and to shift the volatile balance of power in the region in ways we cannot foresee. </p>
<p>But one thing’s for sure: the land of the rising sun is rising again.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/42277/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Neville Chi Hang Li does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Japan has spent decades proudly staying out of military matters, but China’s maritime belligerence has changed all that.Neville Chi Hang Li, PhD Candidate in International Security and Demography, University of BathLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/374052015-02-18T00:11:36Z2015-02-18T00:11:36ZThe case for Japan to play a bigger part in global affairs and security<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/71551/original/image-20150210-24679-3vch6i.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Genbaku Dome at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial has long been the focus of remembrance and now also serves as a site for reconciliation between former enemies.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Saleem H. Ali</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The horrific murder of Japanese nationals by Islamic State (IS) terrorists in early February has sparked a pensive debate about whether the pacifist <a href="http://japan.kantei.go.jp/constitution_and_government_of_japan/constitution_e.html">Japanese constitution</a> is an anachronism. Article 9 of the constitution is a product of Japan’s defeat in the Second World War. It states that:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>… the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>This has been subject to varying interpretations over the years. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government is interpreting the clause to allow for the military to exercise a right to <a href="http://thediplomat.com/tag/japan-collective-self-defense/">“collective self-defence”</a> and assist allies. Ironically, this is partially a response to requests by Japan’s former foe, the United States, for a broader coalition to fight terrorism in the Middle East.</p>
<h2>From enemies to allies</h2>
<p>The Japan-US relationship is a tale of ambition and agony. Going back to the Meiji restoration in the 19th century, the Japanese <a href="http://afe.easia.columbia.edu/special/japan_1750_meiji.htm">aspired to be more like America</a>. At least 30,000 Japanese immigrated to the US <a href="http://www.janm.org/projects/inrp/english/overview.htm">during this period</a>.</p>
<p>However, following the rise of colonialism and the tepid response to Japan’s <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Japan-Race-Equality-Institute-Routledge/dp/0415497353">“racial equality” proposal to the League of Nations</a>, the Japanese population became increasingly disillusioned with the West. A strong sense of nationalism took root. </p>
<p>The Japanese saw themselves as protectors of Asia from colonialism. But they became consumed by fear and fury and by a perversion of the ostensibly humanitarian doctrine of Hakkō ichiu (八紘一宇, or “the world under one roof”). Military aggression came to be justified by an imperial saviour complex. </p>
<p>Conflicting narratives have emerged about the extent of Japanese atrocities in Korea and China and about whether the dropping of the atomic bombs was essential to end the conflict. Regardless, the war and the dawn of the nuclear age had a cataclysmic climax in Japan.</p>
<p>What is remarkable today is how fast the Japanese have moved on. They have largely healed relations with Americans, as well as with Chinese and Koreans. Despite sabre-rattling over disputed islands and other shows of public outrage, the Japanese find ways to maintain pragmatic relations with their former adversaries. </p>
<p>Japan has learnt from the perils of the isolation and xenophobia that marked the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sakoku">Sakoku</a> (鎖国) period, coinciding with Western colonial expansion in the 17th and 18th centuries. Perhaps this can be credited to the pragmatic Japanese view of hybridity in culture that emerged after the 1868 Meiji reforms: termed “wakon yousai” (和魂洋才) – “Japanese spirit but Western techniques” – and Wakon-kansai (和魂漢才), meaning “Japanese spirit and Chinese scholarship”. Such eclecticism has served the country well in recovering from the catastrophic surrender in the Second World War.</p>
<p>In the words of historian <a href="http://history.mit.edu/people/john-w-dower">John Dower</a>, the Japanese <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embracing_Defeat">“embraced defeat”</a> and gleaned lessons from across the world to transform their nation into an economic powerhouse. Despite economic stagnation in recent years, the economy remains the world’s third-largest. Japan’s manufacturing and services sectors continue to adapt to changing times.</p>
<p>Even epic natural disasters like the Tohoku <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-17219008">earthquake and tsunami</a>, which caused the closure of 52 nuclear power plants and <a href="http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/news/japan/2011/japan-110325-voa01.htm">damages exceeding US$300 billion</a>, have been absorbed without economic collapse. Remarkable resilience was evident as back-up energy sources were brought up within days. </p>
<p>A country with such an ability to respond to catastrophes certainly deserves a greater role in international security.</p>
<h2>An archipelago of accord</h2>
<p>Earlier this year, I visited the island of Okinawa, which exemplifies Japan’s adaptability to changing global conditions. Culturally, the Ryuku island group has been a literal bridge between China and Japan. The islands are also the place where the presence of some 26,000 American troops keeps the military balance of power in the region.</p>
<p>The US forces are stationed there indefinitely, though a 2012 agreement will reduce the number of marines by 9000. Despite <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryukyu_independence_movement">rumblings of discontent and even some secessionist cries</a>, the Okinawans have generally found ways to live in concord with the Americans who occupy around 20% of the main island. </p>
<p>In November 2014, a hawkish mayor who opposes the US military presence was elected. Yet even that has not changed the relatively diplomatic cadence that marks Japan’s political culture since the second world war. Rather than issuing bellicose threats, Mayor Takeshi Onaga has stated his desire to <a href="http://www.dw.de/japans-new-okinawa-governor-could-delay-us-pacific-pivot/a-18077918">“open an office in Washington”</a> to directly raise the concerns of the Okinawese with the US.</p>
<p>Like Hiroshima, Okinawa has a very <a href="http://www.peace-museum.pref.okinawa.jp/english/">heavily visited peace memorial</a>. It tries to reconcile the wartime past of Japanese colonial arrogance with a more humble and humanistic future. During his first official visit to Japan in 2009, US President Barack Obama was invited by the former mayor of Hiroshima and former Tufts University professor, Tadatoshi Akiba, to <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/07/world/asia/07japan.html?_r=0">visit the city and make a final gesture of healing</a>.</p>
<p>WikiLeaks cable leaks have <a href="https://www.wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/09TOKYO2033_a.html">revealed recently</a> that Obama was interested in issuing an apology for the nuclear attacks on Japan during a visit to Hiroshima or Okinawa. The erstwhile Japanese vice-foreign minister, Mitoji Yabunaka, asked that no such apology take place:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>While a simple visit to Hiroshima without fanfare is sufficiently symbolic to convey the right message, it is premature to include such programme in the US presidential visit.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Although some commentators may read domestic political motives <a href="http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-News-2-238759-Obama-wanted-to-say-sorry-for-Hiroshima-but-Tokyo-stopped-him">into this stance</a>, it also shows some level of maturity about international relations and reaching accord with former enemies. Since then, the US ambassador to Japan, Caroline Kennedy (daughter of JFK), has visited Hiroshima and the new mayors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki have <a href="http://www.mayorsforpeace.org/english/topic/2013/201312_request/131226Letter_of_Request.pdf">again invited</a> the president to visit. Last year, peace activists <a href="http://www.japantimes.co.jp/community/2014/02/05/voices/u-s-and-japanese-apologies-for-war-crimes-could-pave-way-for-nuclear-disarmament/#.VNMHXy7fAUM">suggested</a> both countries offer a mutual apology.</p>
<h2>Japan has earned the right to a bigger role</h2>
<p>The willingness of Japan to stand by the US-led coalition against IS terrorism has made the matter of an apology perhaps passé. But some form of formal inclusion of Japan in international security matters is long overdue.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.securityconference.de/en/">The Munich Security Conference</a>, held since 1963 but only recently attended by major world leaders on an annual basis, reflects the salient role of Germany, the former Allied powers’ arch foe, as a global security broker. Similar steps towards the inclusion of Japan are now needed. </p>
<p>As one of the largest contributors of funds to the United Nations, and <a href="http://www.jiyuushikan.org/e/reparations.html">having paid billions in war reparations</a>, the Japanese have atoned for many of their past sins. They have also shown the ability to learn from past military indiscretions, arguably more so than the United States. </p>
<p>Japan is expected to be elected this year as one of the rotating annual non-permanent members of the UN Security Council. It would be the <a href="http://www.un.org/en/sc/members/elected.asp">11th time</a> since the United Nations was founded, a mark of the respect Japan has earned.</p>
<p>Although the five permanent Security Council members are unlikely to change any time soon, other reforms are in order. Perhaps abolishing their veto power, as former Australian foreign minister Gareth Evans <a href="http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2015/02/06/commentary/world-commentary/limiting-the-security-councils-veto-power/">recently suggested</a>, would be another way to level the playing field. </p>
<p>Whatever path is chosen, it is essential that Japan has a substantive role in the global security discourse beyond its own regional purview. The Land of the Rising Sun has an important ascendant role to play in world affairs.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/37405/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Saleem H. Ali does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The horrific murder of Japanese nationals by Islamic State (IS) terrorists in early February has sparked a pensive debate about whether the pacifist Japanese constitution is an anachronism. Article 9 of…Saleem H. Ali, Director, Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining and Affiliate Professor of Politics and International Studies, The University of QueenslandLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/287192014-07-07T20:17:04Z2014-07-07T20:17:04ZAbe’s Australia visit comes in the wake of constitutional controversy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/53099/original/h4jn6m6j-1404692914.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">The Australian government has unquestioningly embraced Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe's nationalistic defence policies.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Kimimasa Mayama</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe will today <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/House_of_Representatives/About_the_House_News/This_week_in_the_House">address</a> a joint sitting of the Australian parliament as part of his tour of Oceania. This rare honour comes in the wake of his cabinet’s <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/07/01/us-japan-defense-resolution-idUSKBN0F63OE20140701">controversial decision</a> last week to reinterpret the pacifist Article 9 clause of Japan’s Constitution. This will allow the Japanese Self-Defence Forces (JSDF) to engage in “collective self-defence” with friendly states.</p>
<p>Australia is set to gain shared access to Japanese “stealth” submarine technology as part of a defence technology sharing agreement due to be signed along with the Japan-Australia Economic Partnership Agreement during Abe’s Australian visit. Abe is also being granted the rare privilege of <a href="http://www.afr.com/p/national/abbott_faces_balancing_act_japan_SsbxV0iMG8RqbQuqJU2yRK">attending a meeting</a> of cabinet’s National Security Committee. </p>
<p>In its unquestioning embrace of Abe’s more assertive and nationalistic defence policy, the Abbott government risks drawing Australia deeper into a US-led geopolitical containment of China, instead of pursuing more active diplomacy to resolve the worsening tensions between China and its neighbours.</p>
<p>Closer Australian-Japanese defence ties could endanger Australia’s relationship with China, placing the conclusion of a <a href="http://theconversation.com/why-china-australia-fta-may-still-be-some-way-off-28334">free trade agreement</a> in further jeopardy.</p>
<h2>The constitutional reinterpretation</h2>
<p>Japan’s <a href="http://japan.kantei.go.jp/96_abe/decisions/2014/__icsFiles/afieldfile/2014/07/03/anpohosei_eng.pdf">defence policy shift</a> is supposedly limited to a range of restricted scenarios, such as defending allied warships under attack near Japanese waters, intercepting hostile ships and missiles, minesweeping, protecting civilians in peacekeeping operations and other “grey zone” scenarios. Abe has <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2014-07-01/an-japan-constitution/5564098">sought to reassure</a> the public that despite the new constitutional interpretation, Japan will not engage in overseas wars such as the 2003 invasion of Iraq.</p>
<p>The cabinet decision still <a href="http://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Economy/Policy-Politics/Japan-OKs-collective-self-defense-reinterprets-Constitution">requires</a> a parliamentary debate and subsequent bills being passed in the Diet, where the ruling conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) holds a comfortable majority with its ruling coalition partner, the New Komeito Party. Up to 18 laws and treaties will need to be updated to make the changes legally effective. </p>
<p>However, majority public opinion remains opposed to the change, as marked by large public demonstrations. Approval ratings for Abe’s cabinet <a href="http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2014/07/03/national/politics-diplomacy/cabinet-approval-rating-falls-controversial-shift-defense-policy/#.U7Y_0eLNxm4">have fallen</a> to their lowest levels since the LDP came to office in 2012.</p>
<p>Lawyers and academics in Japan are concerned this shift creates a dangerous precedent. The government of the day has chosen to reinterpret the constitution as it sees fit, rather than first put it to a vote in the Diet and then a national referendum of the electorate, which is required for any constitutional alteration. Since being drafted in 1947, Japan’s US-designed constitution has <a href="http://ajw.asahi.com/article/views/editorial/AJ201407020038">never been amended</a>. </p>
<p>Critics of the reinterpretation also claim that it is unnecessary and provocative. The JSDF is already one of the <a href="http://asia.nikkei.com/Politics-Economy/International-Relations/China-fires-up-arms-race-against-Japan">strongest armed forces</a> in the Pacific It remains highly capable of defending Japanese territory even under Article 9 restrictions.</p>
<p>Japan’s defences are backed up by a large US military presence under the US-Japan Security Treaty. This treaty’s importance was <a href="http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/04/25/us-japan-joint-statement-united-states-and-japan-shaping-future-asia-pac">underlined</a> by US president Barack Obama in the Senkaku Islands dispute with China during his visit to Japan in April. </p>
<p>The JSDF has also participated in <a href="http://www.mofa.go.jp/policy/un/pko/pdfs/contribution.pdf">United Nations peacekeeping operations</a> since the 1990s and in a controversial “non-combat” deployment to Iraq between 2004 and 2006. This demonstrates that Japan is already capable of contributing to international peace and security without having to reinterpret Article 9.</p>
<p>The US has long pushed for reinterpretation of Article 9. The move complements the <a href="https://theconversation.com/whatever-happened-to-the-pivot-23261">“pivot”</a> of US maritime forces towards the Pacific. The change will further assist an <a href="http://www.defense.gov/pubs/U.S.-Japan-Joint-Statement-of-the-Security-Consultative-Committee.pdf">update</a> to the status of Japan’s defence co-operation with the US, which is due by the end of the year. </p>
<p>And in no small coincidence, on the day of the cabinet decision, JSDF members from Japan’s new amphibious warfare unit <a href="http://www.cpf.navy.mil/rimpac/2014/participants/">joined</a> US-led RIMPAC military exercises held in Hawaii. China also participated in the exercises.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/53102/original/7js2nb52-1404694289.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/53102/original/7js2nb52-1404694289.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/53102/original/7js2nb52-1404694289.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/53102/original/7js2nb52-1404694289.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=429&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/53102/original/7js2nb52-1404694289.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/53102/original/7js2nb52-1404694289.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/53102/original/7js2nb52-1404694289.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=539&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Majority public opinion remains opposed to the Abe government’s constitutional reinterpretation.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Christopher Jue</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Regional response</h2>
<p>Japan’s constitutional reinterpretation has also been <a href="http://online.wsj.com/articles/philippine-president-backs-abes-military-push-1403594118">welcomed by the Philippines</a>, which is in territorial dispute with China in the South China Sea. Japan’s more active defence posture will involve <a href="http://ajw.asahi.com/article/behind_news/politics/AJ201406270060">increasing</a> security-related Overseas Development Aid to various ASEAN states, particularly the Philippines and Vietnam, as well as easing restrictions on defence-related exports.</p>
<p>Abe has also increased security ties with India, as well as trade and investment. On returning to office as prime minster, Abe re-floated the idea of a quadrilateral security arrangement between Japan, the US, India and Australia, which he termed the <a href="http://thediplomat.com/2013/05/the-indian-piece-of-abes-security-diamond/">“Security Diamond”</a>. </p>
<p>However, it seems unlikely that such a structure will come about any time soon, given India’s <a href="http://thediplomat.com/2014/06/will-chinas-reset-with-india-work/">ambiguous relationship</a> with its neighbour China. Despite both sides desiring <a href="https://theconversation.com/indias-struggle-to-define-its-look-east-policy-looks-set-to-continue-28104">closer trade and investment ties</a>, India has territorial disputes with China as part of an increasing strategic rivalry in the Indian Ocean.</p>
<p>China <a href="http://www.stripes.com/news/china-blasts-japan-s-new-self-defense-posture-as-others-voice-support-1.291572">responded angrily</a> to Japan’s policy shift. South Korea is also unhappy with the decision. </p>
<p>Ironically, reaction from traditionally hostile North Korea has been muted. Negotiations to resolve the issue of Japanese abducted by North Korea more than 30 years ago are ongoing. Japan is now <a href="http://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/english/news/20140704_19.html">easing sanctions</a> against the isolated regime.</p>
<p>Japan’s constitutional shift, promoted by Abe as “proactive Pacifism” and aimed at improving peace and security for Japan and the region, may instead provoke intensified hegemonic confrontation <a href="http://www.theage.com.au/world/brace-for-more-tensions-in-asia-chinese-analyst-20140703-zsudd.html">with China</a>. </p>
<hr>
<p><strong>Further reading:</strong> <a href="https://theconversation.com/japan-and-australia-join-forces-in-asias-brave-new-world-28726">Japan and Australia join forces in Asia’s Brave New World</a></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/28719/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Craig Mark does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe will today address a joint sitting of the Australian parliament as part of his tour of Oceania. This rare honour comes in the wake of his cabinet’s controversial decision…Craig Mark, Associate Professor of International Studies, Kwansei Gakuin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/196502013-10-31T03:36:14Z2013-10-31T03:36:14ZSenkaku Islands the latest battleground as Japan gets tough under Abe<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34132/original/g7tq5stt-1383175983.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Japanese prime minister has reiterated his desire to maintain control of the disputed Senkaku Islands in his latest show of assertiveness.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe has received praise from financial markets and economists for <a href="http://www.cfr.org/japan/abenomics-japanese-economy/p30383">“Abenomics”</a>, his set of economic stimulus policies which have so far returned <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/24/opinion/krugman-japan-the-model.html">positive growth</a> to the long-stagnant Japanese economy. However, the <a href="http://www.stasiareport.com/the-big-story/asia-report/japan/story/guide-japans-remilitarisation-20130828">potential remilitarisation</a> of Japan by Abe’s conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) government is proving to be far more confrontational.</p>
<p>In recent media statements - most prominently at the annual review of the Self Defense Forces (SDF) this week - Abe <a href="http://blogs.wsj.com/japanrealtime/2013/10/28/japans-abe-keeps-up-heat-on-china/">reiterated</a> that Japan has to increase its defence preparedness to secure Japan from threats, and to allow it to play a greater role in international security. Abe <a href="http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/10/27/national/abe-issues-fresh-warning-to-china-on-isle-row/#.UnGyrmQW3B9">directly warned</a> that Japan would not allow China to make any changes by force to the territorial status quo of the region. </p>
<p>In doing so, Abe raised the prospect of Chinese drones being shot down over Japanese territory, with China <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-10-28/japan-china-war-of-words-erupts-regional-tensions/5048744">angrily responding</a> that any such action would be an act of war.</p>
<p>This escalation of rhetoric over the <a href="http://thediplomat.com/flashpoints-blog/2013/09/11/senkakudiaoyu-islands-a-tense-anniversary/">disputed Senkaku Islands</a>, claimed as the Diaoyus by China (and Taiwan), continues the near-constant confrontation between maritime security forces of China and Japan in the waters and skies surrounding the disputed islands in the East China Sea. These have increased since the former Democratic Party of Japan government nationalised the islands, purchasing them from private owners in September last year.</p>
<p>Since coming to power in December 2012 - and <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-07-21/an-japan-election/4834032">winning a majority</a> for the LDP in the Upper House in July - Abe has been rolling out a more strident national security agenda. Defence spending is undergoing its largest increase in 22 years, with an emphasis on developing greater capability for carrying out amphibious assaults, overtly aimed at retaking islands captured by hostile powers.</p>
<p>Previous Japanese governments have gradually expanded the use of the SDF, stretching the boundaries of the notionally pacifist <a href="http://www.kantei.go.jp/foreign/constitution_and_government_of_japan/constitution_e.html">Article 9 clause</a> of the US-designed Japanese constitution. Participation in UN peacekeeping began in the 1990s, and in UN-authorised multinational anti-piracy operations since 2008. The LDP under prime minister Junichiro Koizumi <a href="http://www.mod.go.jp/e/publ/w_paper/pdf/2006/5-1-2.pdf">committed the SDF</a> to non-combat support roles in the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.</p>
<p>Abe has long sought to “normalise” Japan’s defence and foreign policy, with the goal of renaming the SDF as the “National Defense Forces”. This would allow it to deploy the full military powers of a sovereign state, as permitted under the UN Charter. However, the LDP still does not have the two-thirds majority required in parliament to easily change the constitution, which would also have to be approved by public referendum. Abe nevertheless is <a href="http://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2013/08/19/reference/clearing-way-for-wider-military-role/#.UnBzq9X6t9o">proposing to re-interpret</a> the constitution to allow the SDF to participate in “collective self-defence” with its allies, principally the US.</p>
<p>To this end, the tempo and size of joint military exercises alongside the US have already increased. US forces are already deployed in Japan, primarily based in Okinawa, and also further afield. Amphibious landing manoeuvres were held between the SDF and US forces in June <a href="http://nation.time.com/2013/06/12/japan-sends-its-troops-into-uncharted-waters/">this year in California</a>, with more exercises conducted recently on mainland Japan. Trilateral exercises have <a href="http://www.voanews.com/content/north-korea-denounces-joint-us-south-korea-miitary-pact-exercises/1764345.html">also been held</a> between the US, Japan and South Korea, aimed at deterring North Korea, the other main security threat faced by Japan. </p>
<p>This more nationalistic policy also appeals to the LDP’s conservative support base. This is reflected in more frequent visits by LDP politicians to the controversial Yasukuni war memorial shrine, much to the <a href="http://mainichi.jp/english/english/newsselect/news/20131020p2g00m0dm004000c.html">displeasure</a> of neighbours China and Korea.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34147/original/qprz8jbq-1383187306.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/34147/original/qprz8jbq-1383187306.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34147/original/qprz8jbq-1383187306.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34147/original/qprz8jbq-1383187306.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34147/original/qprz8jbq-1383187306.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34147/original/qprz8jbq-1383187306.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/34147/original/qprz8jbq-1383187306.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Senkaku Islands, the source of a long-running dispute between Japan and China.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">EPA/Coast Guard Administration</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Abe’s more robust approach has also been pursued domestically this week, with legislation approved by Cabinet - and being voted on in parliament - to establish a National Security Council, following the US model. This will enable more coordinated responses to national security crises, which will be further developed in Japan’s first post-war National Security Strategy, <a href="http://ajw.asahi.com/article/views/editorial/AJ201310230047">expected to be approved</a> by the Cabinet in December. </p>
<p>Bills are also being enacted to more tightly secure government information, with heavier penalties against leakers from the public service and for journalists who “encourage” or benefit from leaks. The Abe government claims this is necessary to secure intelligence sharing and cooperation with the US and other allies (which could include Australia). </p>
<p>These measures have been criticised by the <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/10/25/us-japan-secrecy-idUSBRE99N1EC20131025">Japanese Bar Association</a> and media outlets as harming freedom of speech, potentially allowing the government to evade transparency on a wide range of issues it could designate as “state secrets”. This could include nuclear safety, as well as diplomacy and national security overall. </p>
<p>The US is welcoming the more assertive Japanese policy as complementary to its “pivot” of military forces to the Pacific, with a <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/04/world/asia/japan-and-us-agree-to-broaden-military-alliance.html?pagewanted=1">new security agreement</a> signed earlier this month allowing US surveillance drones to operate from Japan. </p>
<p>And, of course, Australian prime minister Tony Abbott recently described Japan as Australia’s <a href="https://theconversation.com/politics-of-the-closest-friend-abbott-japan-and-the-asia-pacific-19069">“closest friend in Asia”</a>, strengthening security ties through the Trilateral Strategic Dialogue. Abbott and Australian foreign minister Julie Bishop have optimistically expressed their hope that effective diplomacy will maintain peace in the region. </p>
<p>The need for such diplomacy to actually be pursued far more energetically is becoming urgent.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/19650/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Craig Mark does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe has received praise from financial markets and economists for “Abenomics”, his set of economic stimulus policies which have so far returned positive growth to the long-stagnant…Craig Mark, Associate Professor of International Studies, Kwansei Gakuin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/114132012-12-19T23:42:52Z2012-12-19T23:42:52ZIn Japan, it’s bring in the old, turf out the new<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/18869/original/595v7r54-1355877602.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Shinzo Abe has returned to the post of prime minister in Japan.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">m-louis/Flickr</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>I thought for a breathless moment back in 2009 that we would see a new progressive government in Japan. Gone would be almost six decades of <a href="https://theconversation.com/economic-gloom-and-political-chaos-japans-election-to-bring-more-uncertainty-10899">unimaginative conservative rule</a>. Gone would be the subservience of elected Diet members to an overweeningly arrogant bureaucracy. Gone would be the endemic complaisance of the Tokyo foreign policy establishment towards United States military “protection”. </p>
<p>Annual visits by the head of government to the Yasukuni Shrine that so upset the Koreans and Chinese would be things of the past. Relations with China would improve in other areas. New taxes would be brought in to cover a growing deficit in public finance. There might even be a new immigration policy that would allow young foreigners to settle in Japan to add much needed vigour to an <a href="https://theconversation.com/to-awaken-its-dormant-economy-japan-must-confront-an-age-old-problem-9401">ageing work force</a>.</p>
<p>Those hopes were not realised. The three DPJ leaders who rotated so rapidly through the prime minister’s lodge in Nagata-cho between 2009 and 2012 proved to be indecisive and weak. Yukio Hatoyama succumbed to a financial scandal. Naoto Kan made a brave show of getting reforms going, but never really stood up to the bureaucracy, and came undone over his maladroit handling of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011. Yoshihiko Noda was limp-wristed about many issues, including the need for economic reform and public outrage over the <a href="https://theconversation.com/powering-japan-after-fukushima-4693">duplicity of TEPCO</a> over Fukushima.</p>
<p>In December 2012, the inevitable dénouement occurred. The electorate did not so much vote in the LDP as vote out the DPJ. Winning 480 seats, the Liberal Democrat and New Komeito parties swept into office. The Japan Democrats lost 251 of their 308 seats, putting them barely ahead of the third force in the Diet, the ultra right-wing Japan Restoration Party. And this is a worry which I shall come back to.</p>
<p>The new Japanese prime minister, Shinzo Abe, is, to put it mildly, unimpressive. The grandson of one conservative post-war prime minister, Nobusuke Kishi, and grandnephew of another, Eisaku Sato, Abe has a formidable pedigree. But he showed no inherited leadership qualities when he hit the track in his first term as prime minister. Instead, he experienced a short, undistinguished year as Liberal Democratic prime minister before the Japan Democrats took over in 2009. In particular, his domestic economic policies were unimaginative, even timid.</p>
<p>Abe was even less impressive in handling non-economic issues. His conservatism shone through and he refused to entertain the possibility of a female heir to the Imperial throne. He supported Taiwan as a country independent of China. He repeatedly visited Yasukuni Shrine, resting place of many class-A war criminals. His pronouncements about Japan’s recent history encompassed the origins of the Pacific War (not Japan’s fault), distortions that continued to appear in Japanese history text books. </p>
<p>He claimed that Korean comfort women who serviced Japanese troops were mere prostitutes, increasing outrage in Seoul. When he visited Pyongyang, he negotiated with Kim Jong Il an agreement to bring some of the Japanese abducted years before by Pyongyang back to Japan for a visit, but then refused to return them to their families in Korea at the end of their stay. All these moves deeply offended the Koreans (both North and South), and on the text book issue, China.</p>
<p>As the recycled prime minister in 2012, Abe appears not to have modified these tendencies. Indeed, pressured as he will be by the ultra-nationalist Japan Restoration Party that has suddenly emerged as a third force in the Diet by scoring 54 seats – three less than the erstwhile governing Democratic Party of Japan - they are likely to be reinforced. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/18873/original/j22d5584-1355878785.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/18873/original/j22d5584-1355878785.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/18873/original/j22d5584-1355878785.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/18873/original/j22d5584-1355878785.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/18873/original/j22d5584-1355878785.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/18873/original/j22d5584-1355878785.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/18873/original/j22d5584-1355878785.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Naoto Kan came undone politically after his handling of the Fukushima disaster.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">IAEA Imagebank</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The JRP is led by the former Governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara, and his colleague from Osaka, Toru Hashimoto. Ishihara gained prominence by standing up to Washington in his book <a href="http://www.csse.monash.edu.au/%7Ejwb/japan_no.html">The Japan that can Say No</a>. He wants bigger military forces and their re-appellation as Army, Navy and Air Force rather than “self-defence forces”. He wants to revise Article Nine of the Constitution to allow Japan the capacity to wage war. </p>
<p>The Fukushima disaster, he asserts, was divine punishment for Japanese indulgence. Japan should continue to pursue nuclear energy and acquire nuclear weapons. Ishihara’s stable-mate, Hashimoto, is mercurial, opinionated, and has more grass roots support outside his Osaka bailiwick that he is often given credit for. He shares many of Ishihara’s views, especially on foreign affairs, most dangerously on standing up to a resurgent China.</p>
<p>This all makes Abe’s dealing with China problematic. And, in response to such anti-China assertiveness by this new breed of Japanese reactionaries, Beijing has been ramping up its own territorial assertiveness over what it calls the Daioyu Islands. </p>
<p>In recent weeks it has sent a surveillance aircraft over the islands, with Japan Air Self Defence Force F15 fighter aircraft unsuccessfully scrambling to intercept it. Chinese naval vessels have patrolled through the area. On 13 December, a Chinese para-military aircraft overflew the islands’ airspace, and on 16 December, Chinese fisheries agency vessels appeared on patrol. </p>
<p>This is very dangerous. Even if officials from Beijing and Tokyo are hard at work trying to defuse the situation, a miscalculation by either side could easily lead to a shooting match.</p>
<p>Perhaps Abe or the new Chinese leadership will have the wisdom to back off. But it seems to me that at present the Japanese government is in crisis so deep that it is no longer morally or intellectually capable of being able to successfully deal with such issues. Or any others. I profoundly hope that I am wrong.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/11413/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Richard Broinowski does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>I thought for a breathless moment back in 2009 that we would see a new progressive government in Japan. Gone would be almost six decades of unimaginative conservative rule. Gone would be the subservience…Richard Broinowski, Adjunct Professor, University of SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.