Written on the eve of Japan's dispatch of Self-Defense Forces (army) to Iraq, a major step in the erosion of the peace constitution, this article examines three issues central to understanding the contemporary Japanese military and society. The first of these is the question of the willingness of SDF forces to go to Iraq at a time when strong opposition to its dispatch surfaced in Japanese society. Based on questionnaires and interviews with SDF personnel, the article examines SDF views concerning deployment to Iraq as well as constitutional issues. The second is the nature of the movement seeking to elicit opinions and support resistance to the dispatch to Iraq, from within the ranks of the SDF. This may be viewed as a successor to the Vietnam-era movement that supported GI resistance among US troops stationed in Okinawa and Japan. The third is the existence of serious problems within the SDF, particularly bullying of recruits and suicides that have soared in recent years. This article appeared in the November, 2004 issue of Sekai (World), pp. 47-54. Posted at Japan Focus on February 15, 2005.

The U.S. occupation of Iraq has become ever more chaotic. Last November, U.S. forces insisted that Fallujah, a Sunni town in central Iraq, was the hub of Iraq's guerrilla organisations, and launched an all-out attack. The Bush administration had been insisting that if U.S. troops wiped out the guerrillas there, resistance in other regions would easily be brought under control, and this would allow the general elections, planned for January 30th, to proceed smoothly. Japanese foreign affairs specialists also predicted that ‘if the U.S. forces bring Fallujah under control, Iraq will become stable.’

Chong Hyang Gyun has just written herself into the history books, but not for the reason she wanted.

The 54-year-old spent a decade fighting the Tokyo Metropolitan Government for the right to take a promotion exam, from which she was barred because of her South Korean nationality. If she had won, nationality would have ceased to be a factor in determining senior civil service jobs in Japan.

I am among those who accept the necessity for reorganization of the United Nations Security Council; we need a change in composition of the countries that comprise it. At the same time, I should like to recall that this reorganization is not the same as a reform of the United Nations.

Restructuring of the Security Council is needed, I believe, because the principles guiding its composition are outmoded. In particular, the basis for the selection of its permanent members has lost any sense of reality and legitimacy.

Does Japan realise that it has a population problem? On paper it does. But in terms of concrete measures to cope with the problem it has some light years to go.

The problem has several dimensions. One is the economic damage from population decline, the downsizing of demand in an economy already suffering from chronic lack of demand. Then there is the burden of maintaining health and pension payments in a rapidly aging population. Finally there is the unpleasant fact that declining population, combined with continued economic weakness, guarantees a further decline in Japan's Asian and global status just as China's power and status are on the rise.

Many Asians are now debating the idea of Asia. Some want to create a regional system in opposition to neo-liberal imperialism. Others want to transcend nationalism, which they regard as outmoded, and to create a fresh sense of Asian identity that does not depend on the old, and western-invented, dichotomy of East and West.

In recent months, officials at the Bank of Japan have been scratching their heads at a puzzling phenomenon. In spite of nearly three years of robust economic growth, a run of dazzling corporate profits and recent signs of a tightening labour market, wages have been falling.

Even in the second quarter of 2004, when the economy was growing at an exhilarating 6 per cent a year, total remuneration was still falling by 1.1 per cent. This has been the seventh straight year of decline. If the US has experienced a largely jobless recovery, Japan is going through a wageless one.

Mark Ealey translates and Introduces Yoshimura Akira's novel probing the moral equation underlying the Pacific War in a novel that explores American firebombing of Japanese cities and the Japanese revenge killing of U.S. POWs.

Throughout history, acts of hypocrisy have come easily to the world's Great Powers. In 1938, in reaction to Japan's “barbarous” bombing of Chinese civilians, the United States placed a “moral embargo” on the supply of planes and aviation equipment to Japan. One year later, U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued the following appeal:

The President of the United States to the Governments of France, Germany, Italy, Poland and His Britannic Majesty, September 1, 1939.

Japan is proceeding towards full security normalization, moving closer to throwing off all the externally and self-imposed restraints which for half a century produced a disjuncture between its economic status as the world's second largest national economy and its restricted status in the security realm. In the existing world system, normalization of this kind necessarily means militarization, and that is precisely what Japan has undertaken, a process that can be titled “Heisei militarization.” The Bush Doctrine has accelerated but did not cause this process.

The manufacture of depleted uranium (DU) ammunition is a prototypical Cold War arms race story. The Pentagon reported in the 1970s that the Soviet military had developed armor plating for Warsaw Pact tanks that NATO ammunition couldn't penetrate, and began searching for material to make harder bullets, bombs, and shells. After testing various metals, ordnance researchers settled on depleted uranium, a low-level radioactive waste left over from making nuclear fuel and bombs. DU ammunition, which scorches through metal targets, is now supplied to arsenals in the U.S. and abroad which also continue to store “conventional” ammunition. DU shells, when fired, leave a radioactive trail of toxic dust that still lies in parts of Kuwait and Iraq where they were first fired in combat during the 1991 Gulf War. Prohibited from use in training anywhere overseas, it is restricted certain installations in the United States. Citing serious health risks, the Pentagon requires moon-suit type protective gear when approaching anything hit with DU ordnance.

With the North Korean announcement that it now possesses nuclear weapons, (simply meant to intensify pressure on the US to formulate a coherent strategy vis-a-vis Pyongyang) world attention is focused on the issue of solving the nuclear crisis: finding a way to force, or induce, or make North Korea do away with its nuclear program and nuclear aspirations. Millions of words have been written about the methods and tactics best suited to tackle the issue, including the strategy of six-party talks. However, it is rarely mentioned that the nuclear issue can probably not be solved without addressing the deeper issue – the future of North Korea itself. Without a clear-cut strategy on this, all efforts to solve the nuclear issue are probably doomed, or worse, they could even pave the way for a military solution. So, what is preferable – collapse or transformation of the DPRK? And if transformation was to occur, would that help alleviate the tension and solve security problems? What should the world community do?

The media claim that North Korea is trying to obtain and use weapons of mass destruction. Yet the United States, which opposes this strategy, has used or threatened to use such weapons in northeast Asia since the 1940s, when it did drop atomic bombs on Japan.

THE forgotten war – the Korean war of 1950-53 – might better be called the unknown war. What was indelible about it was the extraordinary destructiveness of the United States' air campaigns against North Korea, from the widespread and continuous use of firebombing (mainly with napalm), to threats to use nuclear and chemical weapons (1), and the destruction of huge North Korean dams in the final stages of the war. Yet this episode is mostly unknown even to historians, let alone to the average citizen, and it has never been mentioned during the past decade of media analysis of the North Korean nuclear problem.

The severe rainstorm from last night has stopped. The sunshine is bright for early winter. The leaves on the trees have not yet turned a vivid color. Although the gusts of wind blowing in Yausubetsu located on the Konsen Plateau are not as cold as expected, they are powerful enough to sway me. November 5th, before noon, Mr. Kawase Hanji, age 78, took me to his land (35.5 hectares). This is a vacant lot where people organize events in the summer. The area is so large that I can hardly believe I am standing in the middle of the Japan Ground Self Defense Forces (SDF) Training Area. However, every once in a while, I hear the boom of live-fire training sessions.

One year ago this month, an advance team from Japan's Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF) arrived in Iraq on a mission – so the Japanese public was told – to help rebuild the wartorn country. The rest of the main contingent of 600 troops soon followed.

Then, on Dec. 9, 2004, amid simmering debate over whether the dispatch fell foul of Japan's war-renouncing Constitution – and after an Asahi Shimbun poll registered over 60 percent opposition to it – the Cabinet of Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro extended the Self-Defense Forces' stay by another 12 months.