Anecdotes on Japanese Defense Issues

CDR Salamander objects to a lack of plain speaking on the part of a fellow expert:

A very strange and rather short article came out yesterday from Richard Fontaine, the CEO at the Center for a New American Security (CNAS).

I shouldn’t have to say this, but I will: this isn’t personal, this is professional.

I had to double-check the publication date as it just read, well, strange. But no, August 4th, 2026. Its title, Japan isn’t rearming. It’s adapting to a new era. It is something if it were written by someone else, I might ignore…but Richard isn’t just some rando anon pounding away on Substack…so here we go.

I don't know why Richard Fontaine said Japan isn't rearming, but I do know that anything that sounds like militarizing is problematic within Japan. Legally, that problem begins with Article 9 of the Japanese constitution:

Article 9. 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.

Even so, Japan has maintained the Japanese Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) since 1954. The Ground SDF has tanks and attack helicopters, the Maritime SDF has destroyers and F-35s, and the Air SDF has various fighter jets as well. It all looks like "land, sea, and air forces." They have been challenged in court by groups trying to get the JSDF disbanded entirely, but the Japanese Supreme Court has so far refused to take up the question. The government claim is that in only having forces for the defense of the Japanese homeland, they are not maintaining forces for using force as a means of settling international disputes or recognizing a right of belligerency. The counter-argument is to take Article 9 literally and point out just what I pointed out: The JSDF would certainly seem to be what everyone else in the world recognizes as "land, sea, and air forces."

It's important to keep in mind that, as it stands, Japan is one Supreme Court ruling away from possibly having to disband the SDF or having a constitutional crisis when parliament refuses to obey such a ruling. I think it is extremely unlikely that the Supreme Court would ever take up such a case, but it is at least hypothetically possible.

The Liberal Democratic Party, which is the main conservative party in Japan, would like to amend the constitution to at least allow the JSDF and maybe to get rid of that article altogether, but so far it has not had the numbers or public support to do so.

I would like to add my own personal experience in Japan to help understand the situation further. This comes from my own studies and from living, studying, and working in Japan for the larger part of a decade. I do speak and read Japanese and spent most of my time there with Japanese people, not hanging out with other ex-pats as is common. The following are just my impressions from a lot of conversations with Japanese people over the years.

First, the great majority of Japanese people strongly reject the militarism of the 1930s and '40s. Some are true pacificists who want to see the JSDF disbanded. I've asked them, "What if China invaded Japan? What should Japan do?" and they replied, "We should do nothing. War is always wrong." 

Others saw the contradiction between maintaining the JSDF and Article 9, but accept the situation for pragmatic purposes. Of those, some were pragmatic in saying there are real threats Japan must be prepared for and others were pragmatic in saying that the US insisted Japan have SDF and since the US is Japan's protector they must have the JSDF. Although I talked to Japanese people who seemed amenable to amending the constitution to resolve the contradiction, I don't remember talking to any who would outright endorse getting rid of Article 9.

One way this plays out in conversation is that saying Japan currently had an army (rikugun*) or navy (kaigun) was a real faux pas. The pragmatists were fine with "self-defense forces," but the words rikugun and kaigun are strongly connected in the Japanese mind with the 1930s and '40s militarism. Even if the constitution is amended, I would expect the SDF designation to continue rather than a return to rikugun and kaigun.

Socially, while Americans may comment on the military-civilian divide in America, it is even greater in Japan. Far fewer Japanese are willing to serve in the SDF, for one thing. Another factor, though, is Japan's culture of employment that emphasizes loyalty to the employer. Until the recession of the '90s, being employed by the same company for one's entire working career was common. Financial problems since then have weakened that tradition in corporate work, but not in government work. Once someone joins the SDF, they are very likely to stay for life. This means there are far fewer veterans in the civilian working population than the US has. Even the pragmatists who supported the existence of the SDF were often uneasy about meeting SDF personnel. I remember one woman's reaction when I told her that I had met some SDF guys: She physically recoiled and exclaimed "They're scary!"

Considering all this, if we want to encourage Japan to amend or delete Article 9 and take up a nation's normal military forces (as our allies, obviously), my opinion is that the last thing we would want to do is speak plainly about it. Educated Japanese tend to pay attention to foreign reporting on Japanese affairs; they care about how Japan is seen in the world. If we start saying we want Japan to have a normal army and navy, that will get translated as rikugun and kaigun and all that emotional baggage from WWII will come with that. If the Japanese people swung decisively toward getting rid of the JSDF, a future Supreme Court might oblige them.

I doubt this answers CDR Salamander's question of why Mr. Fontaine rejected the term "rearming," but I think it's relevant to the overall situation. On the other hand, a lot of this is just my experience, not the result of academic research. Make of it what you will.

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* I put guntai (軍隊) here earlier, but the actual term is rikugun (陸軍), though the related guntai would also be problematic.