ドナ ウィークス

In recent years, there has been an increasingly vigorous debate by a wide range of participants over the past, present and future of Japanese security and the national defence policy. Ever since the end of the Cold War, international relations theorists have cast their gaze to Japan, and have been given to re-examining 'comprehensive security' with a particular eye for the meaning of 'security'. The 1990s were a particularly interesting time for this scholarly revisionism, while events of September 2001 have cast an entirely different spectre on the nature and expectations of Japanese security, both domestically and internationally. This article is particularly concerned with the developments in the 1990s as scholars sought to reassert the 'defence' component of the comprehensive security policy hitherto pursued by Japan. This re-examination has elevated former Japanese Defence Agency (JDA) bureaucrat Kubo Takuya as the key architect in crafting Japan's security policy. Tsuyoshi Kawasaki's contributions to the debate are especially interesting on this point. He rightly challenges the short-comings of the so-called 'domestic-constructivists', especially Berger and Katzenstein. However, in attempting to demolish their cases for 'selective biases' he then proceeds to selectively argue a similarly biased case in asserting the superiority of yet another derivation of the realist cause - 'postclassical realism'. His key premises are based on his interpretations of the architect of Japan's National Defence Program Outline, Kubo, and in doing so 'proves' the military aspect of Japan's security policy and its 'inherent superiority' as an explanatory framework. Equally, one can mount a case for the 'comprehensive security' proponents by citing the work and presence of the late Okita Saburo in his contributions to understanding post-war security policy. This article will demonstrate a similar argument to that of Kawasaki's based on an analogous analytical framework which grounds Japanese security consciousness in a deeper historical context. It is part of a larger project which seeks to give empirical substance to constructivist interpretations of Japanese security.

This article considers the Japanese Government's decision to send self-defence force personnel to Iraq 'for humanitarian assistance' as a basis for examining the tensions between expectations and aspirations of Japan's security identity. The deployment presents us with an opportunity to examine prevailing assumptions about international security and what it means for Japan's international 'contributions'. The article seeks to explore the theoretical constructs and practical constraints which foster the tension between those who expect Japan's military capability to be equal to its economic status (that is, a 'normal power') and those who champion Japan's 'comprehensive security' position as a long-standing alternative security interpretation. The article acknowledges that while the deployment may well represent the very limits of constitutional interpretations of the famous Article 9 (or peace clause), it also presents an option which ought to withstand ongoing international and domestic pressures to revise the 1947 Constitution.

P. Jain

P. Jain