Ten years later that slight could help provoke the farthest-reaching change in Japan’s military stance since the end of World War II. Just days after hijackers commandeered airliners and destroyed the World Trade Center in New York, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi proposed sending Japanese forces to aid the American-led retaliation. His plan, submitted for parliamentary approval last Friday, would in effect authorize the largest Japanese military deployment in 50 years–and break a taboo that has underpinned Asian security calculations for much of that time. International opinion is driving the agenda. “If we say ‘No, we can’t do this and that’ at a time when everyone is gearing up to crush terrorism,” Koizumi told Parliament last week, “Japan will never get respect in the international community.”
Proponents insist prestige isn’t the issue. “We are talking not of interests but of obligations,” says Okamoto, who on Sept. 20 became a special adviser to Koizumi’s cabinet. “Image plays a small part in what we are doing.” But in fact, Koizumi has seized upon the current crisis to bolster Japan’s reputation abroad, which has been flagging along with the country’s once mighty economy. His major obstacle: Article 9 of the Constitution, which states that “the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right and the threat of use of force as a means of settling international disputes.” If approved by the Diet, Koizumi’s draft legislation would enable the SDF to provide logistical, medical and humanitarian support to the U.S.-led coalition, but only for the next two years, in “noncombat” areas and with the permission of host nations.
Warships would be allowed to ferry materiel, including guns and bullets, to U.S. forces deployed in the Indian Ocean or the Persian Gulf. Army medical teams could staff field hospitals near the Pakistan-Afghanistan frontier. Air Force and other SDF units could be deployed in refugee camps or sent on search-and-rescue missions for missing American fighters. Although missions would avoid defined combat zones, rules of engagement would allow Japanese soldiers to carry weapons, return hostile fire and defend their posts if attacked.
Japanese seem to have put their traditional pacifism on hold for now. Outraged by the Sept. 11 hijackings, seven in 10 of them support limited SDF deployment in a noncombat capacity. Resistance may have been lowered by the doomsday cult Aum Shinrikyo’s deadly nerve-gas attack on Tokyo’s sub-way system in 1995, which brought home the dangers of terrorism. Many also hope, like Koizumi, that a good showing by Japan’s powerful military might make up for the country’s reputation as an economic weakling.
Asian neighbors, in particular China and South Korea, have traditionally argued loudest against Japan’s playing an offensive military role. But so far, in deference to Washington’s antiterrorism initiative, they, too, have muted criticism of Tokyo’s proposed participation. (At most, South Korean papers have accused Japan of be-ing “in more of a hurry than would seem necessary.”) Koizumi’s allies recognize the rare opportunity. “Reluctantly or not, our neighbors will understand our position [this time],” says a senior Liberal Democratic Party foreign-policy expert. “This is a probing process to see whether, by our actions, we can convince China and Korea that we do not intend to revive militarism.”
Still, by setting a legal precedent, the new law paves the way for eventual revision of Japan’s pacifist Constitution–a process Koizumi and other LDP hawks have long advocated. Not everyone is sanguine about that possibility. Japan’s two leftist parties, the communists and the social democrats, both oppose Koizumi’s plan outright, and the largest opposition group in Parliament, the Democratic Party of Japan, wants to water it down. Some critics say the missions are ill-conceived, even unnecessary. “Dispatching the SDF to assist U.S. forces based on the image of the gulf war is like showing up at a soccer game in a baseball uniform with a bat,” writes Shunji Taoka, senior defense writer for the Asahi Shimbun, in its weekly magazine AERA.
The danger is that in its eagerness to make a symbolic gesture–all that may be needed in this particular battle–Tokyo could open itself up to much more serious obligations down the line. The experience, for instance, should make it easier for the United States to ask for Japanese support in future conflicts in the region, including over Taiwan. Any help provided in faraway Afghanistan could have its greatest impact at home.
