For nearly eight decades, Japan’s international identity was defined by Article 9 of its 1947 Constitution, which renounced war. This was Japan’s post-World War II pacifist stance, initially imposed by others and later adopted as a moral principle by the Japanese themselves. However, as the 21st century has progressed, this strictly pacifist strategy has become unsustainable as a number of new threats have emerged in the region. Today, Japan is undertaking its most significant strategic review since 1945, moving from a strictly defensive to a more proactive deterrence posture through remilitarization and defence modernisation. While these new military capabilities will enhance Japan’s deterrence, they will also increase the security dilemma in the region, requiring a delicate balance between the two.

To understand the defence transformation that is currently underway, it is first necessary to outline the postwar “bargain” that Japan has maintained for so long. The Yoshida Doctrine, which was a pact between Japan and the US that was devised after the end of the Second World War, saw Japan exchange military autonomy for the protection of the US, with the latter providing a nuclear umbrella to allow Japan to concentrate on economic growth and development. It enabled Japan to become one of the world’s leading industrial economies in record time. For decades, a unique cultural and democratic identity of Japan as a “Pacifist State” was intertwined with this policy. The Self-Defence Forces (SDF) had been constrained by a very narrow set of parameters, including a ban on possessing military assets that would project power, an unofficial spending cap of 1% of GDP, and an interpretation of the Constitution that prohibited the SDF from exercising collective defence. This meant that an economic superpower was effectively denied a........

© Eurasia Review