Is Japan leaving pacifism behind?

Japanese postwar pacifism reached its pinnacle in 1976. That year, Prime Minister Takeo Miki adopted two measures representing the tide of the moment: a cap on the annual defense budget equal to 1 percent of gross national product, and a de facto ban on arms exports applying to allies and enemies alike.

For a long time, both policies were considered a national credo and were embraced fully, with pride, by major politicians. This sense of pride was reflected in remarks the same year as Miki’s reforms by Foreign Minister Kiichi Miyazawa, then considered a mainstream conservative: “We should be reluctant to consider whether or not our country will participate in (arms sales). Even if we can earn some foreign currency surplus, our country has not come to ruin so far as to make money by exporting weapons, and we should continue to do so as a country with higher ideals.”

Reflecting

on

Miyazawa’s comments, one could see hubris in implicating nations that export arms as being in “ruin” and holding lesser ideals. However, for people like the foreign minister, who experienced war during their formative years, it was a moral imperative to resist a slippery slope that might lead to the revival of militarism in some shape or form.

Also, Japanese policymakers at the time believed that focusing their attention on economic development, rather than military affairs, was the best course of action.

Miyazawa passed away 17 years ago, but it would be interesting to hear his view on how Prime

Minister Fumio Kishida – his distant relative and successor to the diplomat’s now-defunct faction – has altered the policies Miyazawa’s generation held dear. Almost all the defense budgets that Kishida has passed have exceeded the 1 percent arms exports, which his critics cap and his government aims for argue would propel Japan into defense spending to reach 2 percent becoming a “merchant of death.” of gross domestic product. A precedent was set last year Furthermore, the incumbent wants when the government for the first to further loosen restrictions on time opened the path for Japan to export lethal arms to countries from which it acquires licensing permits, with the view that such a revision was needed to assist the United States’ ongoing effort to arm Ukraine.

To help backfill Ukraine’s depleting missile stock, Japan announced it would provide Patriot missiles to the US – missiles manufactured in Japan based on the permission of American manufacturers. That, in theory, would allow Washington to continue supporting Ukraine while maintaining enough missile stock to contend with other crises.

Recently, opposition in Japan spiked when the possibility of another exception to the lethal arms embargo emerged. The ruling Liberal Democratic Party wanted to pave the way for a forthcoming nextgeneration fighter jet, a joint project undertaken by Japan with Italy and the United Kingdom, to be exported to nations that are not involved in the manufacturing process. Just a few weeks ago, Komeito, the LDP’s junior coalition partner, opposed the change, then flipped its position once Kishida clarified his stance.

The prime minister emphasized that approval of arms exports to third countries would only apply to fighter jets and even then these would only be exported to noncombatant nations. Also, Kishida emphasized that any decision on whether to export fighter jets should be approved unanimously by the Cabinet.

Komeito leaders described Kishida’s explanation as “valid,” “clear and detailed,” and on March 15 agreed with the LDP to greenlight the third-party export of fighter jets. On its website, Komeito highlighted the need to allow such exports to advance the codevelopment of fighter jets and reiterated that the policy change was a matter of “national interest.” On Tuesday last week, Kishida sanctioned a Cabinet decision making the measure an official policy.

In an interview with Jiji, Tomoko Tamura, the newly elected head of the Japanese Communist Party, quoted Miyazawa’s comments from decades ago and criticized Kishida by saying that he is pushing Japan into “ruin.”