Normalizing Japan: Politics, Identity, and the Evolution of Security Practice

(ProQuest: ... denotes non-US-ASCII text omitted.) As witnessed by the continuing popularity of former Air Self-Defense Force General Tamogami Toshio, who was sacked for insubordination over his hard-line views, the political right in Japan, albeit still a minority, is visible and vocal. [...]the increasing readership of such far-right journals as WILL, in contrast to the recent demise of the merely conservative journal Shokun, makes one wonder whether Japan has undergone a fundamental shift in its security identity and has finally dumped its traditional pacifist inclinations embodied in Article 9 of the constitution. [...]he examines the issue of missile defense as the "engine of change" in Japanese defense policy (p. 150), showing that antimilitarism has played a crucial role in determining the policy course of missile defense as it brings to the fore the critical problem of collective defense. [...]Oros states that Japan will continue to embrace the security identity of antimilitarism in the future in the absence of a major external or internal shock; he does not predict changes in the constitution either.