Remilitarized by tensions in the Far East, Japan moves away from its pacifist ideals

In choosing to host the G7, the city of Hiroshima, which was destroyed by the first atomic bomb ever used on August 6, 1945, Japan wants. “Remember what can happen when peace and order break down to give way to instability and conflict”writes Prime Minister Fumio Kishida in a column published by an American magazine on May 18, the day before the summit of the seven most industrialized democracies. Foreign Affairs. But while proclaiming loud and clear the pacifism etched in the marble of its constitution, Tokyo has confirmed the increasingly active role, especially at the military level, that it intends to play on the international stage. Two goals that can turn out to be mutually exclusive.

The archipelago is on a path that could transform it into a “normal” power, i.e. endowed with the legal military freedom of any other sovereign nation on the planet, which is not yet officially the case. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s surprise visit to the G7 meeting on May 19-21 seems to agree with the strategic shift made by the Japanese government.

Although the bad winds of the Russia-Ukraine conflict are now felt as far east as the Far East, amid the Sino-US Cold War, Japan announced on December 16, 2022 a new security strategy: its annual doubling. Defense budget in five years, purchase of long-range missiles and expansion of the principle of defense. “ counterattacks » Can reach launch sites in enemy territory. A historical break with the past.

Semantic fiction

A pacifist constitution drafted during the American occupation, the day after the capitulation of the imperial army, and entered into force in 1947, has been reinterpreted for centuries in the direction of a more proactive defense policy, but has avoided the impression that Japanese public opinion, as well as the rest of the world, is questioning this quasi-sacred. pacifism.

Its Article 9 states that “The Japanese people renounce war forever” and to this end,“There will never be any land, sea or air forces or other war potential maintained” in country. In 1954, to confirm what today looks more and more like a semantic fiction, the army Japan was called the “Japan Defense Forces”. It is a curious paradox that a country acquires weapons and promises never to use them, and which has not fired a single shot since 1945. To date, it has four helicopters and an aircraft carrier, twenty attack submarines and more than a hundred fighter jets, including the latest ones. The generation of American F35s…