Japan's Aging Antimilitarism Is Alive and Well

Abstract

T he end of 2022 marked a watershed moment for Japan’s military planning. A new National Security Strategy offered a sober assessment of the security environment in East Asia, clearly identifying the serious threats posed by Russia, North Korea, and especially China. The accompanying procurement plans included a commitment to making across-the-board improvements in defense capabilities, from acquiring new weapons systems such as long-range missiles to establishing a joint command to oversee the three Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) branches, expanding investments in space and cyber domains, and upgrading systems intelligence. Prime Minister Fumio Kishida further pledged to double Japan’s defense spending to 2% of GDP, eschewing a long-held norm that limited such spending to no more than 1%. These developments are sure to make many who follow Japan interested in reading Tom Phuong Le’s new book, Japan’s Aging Peace: Pacifism and Militarism in the Twenty-First Century, which offers both important historical context and insights into the factors that are likely to shape Japan’s strategic choices for decades to come. Crucially, for Le, increases in Japan’s defense spending and capabilities do not necessarily mean that the country is remilitarizing. To the contrary, Le boldly asserts that Japan’s “antimilitarism ecosystem” is alive and well. This ecosystem is powerfully sustained by a set of material constraints and ideational restraints that “have limited [Japan’s] embrace of conventional militarism as a tool of statecraft” (p. 6). In other words, Japan may develop capabilities to better defend itself, but Le argues that the country will remain committed to only limited uses of force for the foreseeable future. As suggested by the title, aging is an important theme of the book—with “aging” here referring both literally to the immense challenges posed by Japan’s rapidly aging population and figuratively to interpretations that can carry either positive (e.g., wisdom) or negative (e.g., being out of date) connotations. Demographics are thus only part of the story, as the