During this year’s annual training rotation in the Hawaii portion of the Joint Pacific Multinational Training Center — a series of Army training ranges in Hawaii and Alaska — the Japan Self-Defense Forces made its debut at the exercise with 320 troops and 80 vehicles, making it the largest foreign participant.
They shipped their hardware in advance on a chartered commercial freighter that brought them from Japan to Hawaii before navigating Oahu’s roads to make their way to Schofield Barracks as they joined troops from 10 countries for training in October. It was a significant show of force for the JSDF, Japan’s de facto military.
Japanese troops have increasingly had a presence at multinational training exercises around the Pacific, and this year Japan has signed new military cooperation agreements with the Philippines and Australia. Tokyo has also sought closer trilateral military cooperation with the U.S. and South Korea.
It’s a major shift for Japan, which after its devastating defeat in World War II had liked to think of itself as a pacifist nation that rejected the use of violence.
“The current security environment is completely different from a decade ago,” said Lt. Col. Kazuhisa Yoshio, commander of the Japanese troops who came to Oahu. They’re members of the Hokkaido-based 6th Rapid Deployment Regiment, a recently reorganized unit focused on a mixture of infantry and mechanized fighting. Members of the unit also trained in Indonesia this summer.
In recent years, moves by the Chinese military, North Korean missile tests and a much more aggressive Russia have led to major changes. Japan is now on track to double defense spending and seeks long-range missile technologies — along with other new weapon technologies.
“It was believed that it’s politically unthinkable that Japan could introduce the concept of a counterattack force,” said Matake Kamiya, a professor of international relations at the National Defense Academy of Japan. “But after several weeks into the Russian invasion (of Ukraine), we were very surprised to see that now almost 60%-70% of the Japanese public said it’s a good idea that Japan possess (these capabilities).”
An official at Japan’s Ministry of Defense told the Honolulu Star-Advertiser that regardless, “Japan remains a pacifist country and always will be a pacifist country.”
But Ken Jimbo, a professor at Keio University and managing director at the International House of Japan, said, “It’s really a significant change that we are experiencing. And if you ask if that is a pacifist-oriented posture, I would say that it’s not.”
Rebuilding from history
In the years leading up to World War II, the Imperial Japanese military waged a series of small wars in China before launching a full-scale invasion in 1937. The invasion soured Japan’s relations with the United States and other Western powers with interests in the Pacific. The U.S. imposed severe trade restrictions on Japan and in 1940 repositioned the U.S. Pacific Fleet to Pearl Harbor.
When the Japanese Imperial Navy launched its surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, the war expanded into battlefields across Asia and the Pacific. Ultimately, the allies pushed Japanese forces back to their homeland, and the war ended with the nuclear destruction of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945.
After the war, Japan was occupied by Allied troops and wrote a new constitution that pledged in its Article 9 that the nation would never wage war again and that “land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained.”
“They saw the military, the imperial military, which they trusted a lot, actually did a wrong thing and brought a disaster to their country,” said Kamiya. “I think that’s a very natural reaction from the people in the country which conducted that type of war and was defeated terribly in that war.”
But when North Korean troops invaded South Korea in 1950, U.S. forces in Japan were the first to respond. Many Japanese leaders felt uncomfortably vulnerable as the Americans left to fight in Korea with Soviet forces occupying the nearby Kuril islands — which they seized from Japan at the end of World War II and still control to this day. When the Korean War ended, Japan began forming the JSDF and gradually rearmed itself.
“In the face of the Soviet threat and so on, they had to accept that a military is a necessary part of protection of the country,” said Kamiya. “But having acknowledged that, the majority of postwar Japanese people believed that Japan should utilize military power as little as possible.”
Nevertheless, Japan became a key partner for American forces in the Pacific as the Cold War began to heat up. Jimbo noted that “whenever (the Americans) dealt with Soviet forces from Vladivostok that ran their own naval operations, Japan provided almost a 24 hours of the surveillance activities towards the Soviet ships and submarines.”
Members of the JSDF have since occasionally deployed to peacekeeping missions and, controversially, contributed a small contingent of engineering troops to Operation Iraqi Freedom under Australian military command. In the post-9/11 era Japanese forces patrolled against Somali pirates off the Gulf of Aden and even set up an overseas base in the East African nation of Djibouti.
But it was events closer to home, especially Chinese moves in disputed islands and North Korean missile launches, that led to more serious changes in thinking. In 2014 then-Prime Minister Shinzo Abe approved a “reinterpretation” of Article 9, which the Japanese legislature made good on the following year, that would allow Japan to assist allies under threat.
Japanese forces have since sought to increase their cooperation with other militaries. In Hawaii they have become a familiar sight during the biennial exercise Rim of the Pacific, returning to Pearl Harbor now as increasingly close allies of the U.S. and other Pacific countries Japan fought (and in some cases occupied) during World War II. Their debut at JPMRC indicates Oahu residents could see more of them.
“Japan is not a kind of belligerent aggressor anymore, but we are defensive oriented,” said Jimbo. “In order to achieve our defense concept, we have to be proactive. So that in that context that I think of the pacifist-oriented notion that we officially try to advertise is not really capturing this, the exact posture that we are pursuing.”
Dealing with China
Under current Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Beijing has built up its military forces and sought to assert its claims on disputed islands and waterways in the Pacific, especially in the South China Sea, where more than a third of all international trade travels through. That includes particularly important routes for Japan.
Analysts have warned that a blockade or major outbreak of hostilities along those routes could upend the global economy.
Beijing has claimed the waterway as its exclusive sovereign territory over the objection of neighboring countries. In 2016 an international court ruled in the Philippines’ favor and declared that China’s territorial claims had “no legal basis.”
But the Chinese military doubled down, building bases on disputed islands and reefs, and it has frequently harassed and attacked vessels and fishermen from neighboring countries — especially the Philippines and Vietnam. As China’s military might has grown, it has voiced increasingly vehement opposition to countries like the United States, Japan or European nations getting involved.
Jimbo said Beijing’s reactions to international pressure are colored by China’s own experiences with invasions and military expeditions from many of those same countries throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries.
“They have such kind of historical grievances, humiliation in their history for so many years,” said Jimbo. “So that when they talk about Japan, (to them) it’s a Japan in the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s. And when they talk about like a global coalition, they talk about how Shanghai and the northeast part of the China has been intervened in by the major forces, including Europe.”
China and Japan also have a territorial dispute over a chain of islands Japan calls the Senkakus and China calls the Diaoyudao Islands. In August, Chinese military aircraft entered Japanese airspace for the first time.
But perhaps one of the biggest worries for Japan is potential conflict in Taiwan, a self-ruled island democracy that China regards as a rouge province. Taiwan is a key trade partner for both Japan and the U.S. and sits just 100 miles from Japan’s southwesternmost islands.
Officially, neither Tokyo nor Washington diplomatically recognizes the island. But the Taiwan Relations Act of 1979 maintained de facto ties with Washington and requires the U.S. to provide Taiwan with weapons and to “resist any resort to force or other forms of coercion that would jeopardize the security, or the social or economic system, of the people on Taiwan.”
Jimbo said if open war were to break out, there is a “potential case that the United States will come in to help Taiwan with its forces (stationed) in Japan. In that regard, that Japanese Self Defense Forces have no choice but to engage in the war, and China will target us because we are joining in the war.”
New political landscape
The situation in the Pacific is ever changing. Since Russia escalated its war with Ukraine into a full-scale invasion in 2022, Russian forces have worked more closely with the Chinese military — including multiple joint military patrols around Japan. Russia has also bolstered cooperation with North Korea, with Pyongyang even sending troops to Ukraine to help Russia in its war.
Kamiya noted that in an ironic turn, “in the year 2013, a previous version of Japanese national security strategy was issued in which Russia was described as a strategic partner. Now it’s one of the major challenges.”
The reelection of former President Donald Trump this month has raised questions about the future of alliances. The late Japanese Prime Minister Abe was able to cultivate a friendly relationship with Trump, but the former real estate mogul has remained vocal in his skepticism of alliances — especially in Asia.
Some observers in both Japan and the U.S. have been scrutinizing social media remarks by Trump’s nominee for director of national intelligence, former Hawaii U.S. Rep. Tulsi Gabbard.
On 2023’s anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Gabbard posted on the social media platform X, “As we remember Japan’s aggression in the Pacific, we need to ask ourselves this question: is the remilitarization of Japan, which is presently under way, truly a good idea? We need to be careful that shortsighted, self-serving leaders do not end up bringing us again face-to-face with a remilitarized Japan.”
Jimbo said, “North Korea developing its missile and nuclear capabilities and now collaborating deeply with Russia, and Russia no longer hesitating to harass us with their naval activities and air force, and they are deeply collaborating with North Korea and also coordinating their policies with China. So it’s a very tough environment for Japan and (South) Korea, the Philippines and those nations, who now want to develop their own capabilities.”
However, Trump’s tough stance on China and the appointment of several hawkish advisers in what will be his second administration suggest that it would likely seek to continue and even bolster military cooperation with Tokyo.
But Jimbo said that he worries about American officials taking an overly confrontational approach to China. He said he is deeply skeptical of voices he hears in America about a need for a plan to “defeat China” in the coming years. He worries that could push the Pacific region into the very war Japan hopes its new military is deterring.
“Would Japan be happy about joining in the U.S. notion that they want to win the game, the competition against China?” Jimbo asked rhetorically. “Not at all.”
“We have to coexist with China, whatever the political system,” Jimbo explained. “Of course, we don’t want Xi Jinping to concentrate (Chinese) power. We want the business environment to be fair in China. So we share lots of the competitive notions that the United States (and) Washington people may have upon China. (But) I don’t think that we are joining in the group that thinks we have to defeat the Chinese regime.”
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Kevin Knodell reported on this article both on Oahu and in Japan as part of a fellowship with the Foreign Press Center Japan.
