Japan Defense

For decades, Japan has deployed the bulk of its Self-Defense Forces on the northern island of Hokkaido, because the principal threat to its security seemed to be the Soviet Union. But Japanese defense officials now acknowledge that they are thinking about a significant redeployment of these forces--concentrating them more heavily in the westernmost regions of Japan to guard against possible attack by North Korea or China.

Flouting one of postwar Japan's biggest taboos, some Japanese companies have begun talking openly about expanding their sales of weapons. The fastest growth by the defense industry since World War II and recent demands by the United States that Japan spends more on its military have combined to draw arms makers into the daylight.

Japan's lower house of parliament approved long-awaited legislation today that spells out how this nation will assist U.S military forces in case conflict breaks out in its neighborhood. The guidelines for U.S.-Japan defense cooperation do not require Japan to change its "no war" constitution or to fight unless directly attacked.

Defense Secretary Dick Cheney told Japanese officials Thursday that the United States intends to withdraw over the next three years 5,000 to 6,000 of the 57,000 troops it now has stationed in Japan, but offered reassurance that Japan remains the "linchpin" of U.S. Pacific strategy. In exchange for the American military umbrella over the region, Cheney asked Tokyo to assume a significantly greater share of the $7-billion annual cost of maintaining U.S.

Nothing's going to change. Nothing's going to change. Honest. Everything's fine. Go back to sleep. That was going to be the message of next week's state visit by Japanese Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto to Washington. President Clinton was going to give Ryu a big dinner, tell him he's more handsome than Chinese President Jiang Zemin and proclaim America's alliance with Japan to be as smooth-running and repair-free as a Toyota Camry. Whoops.

Suppose there was a war in Korea, and Japan dithered. What if Japan couldn't decide whether refueling U.S. jets battling North Korea or treating wounded American soldiers in Japanese hospitals violated its "peace constitution?" Worried that such a scenario would explode the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, and that trade animosities were eroding an alliance crucial to U.S. security interests in Asia, Pentagon officials three years ago set about fortifying their defense pact with Tokyo.

China's intimidation campaign against Taiwan, aimed at shaking the island's confidence before its first direct presidential election, is rattling the nations on the sidelines of the conflict--and none more so than Japan. Leaders across the region, normally concerned with maintaining good relations with Beijing, are condemning the mainland's missile launches and urging peace in the area.

A seven-minute walk away from the riotous and affluent youth culture of the Shibuya entertainment district, Capt. Yasuo Yamashita sits at his steel desk in a small room on the fifth floor of a drab office building. He has the look of somebody who has been waiting an unbearable length of time for the phone to ring or the door to swing open. Yamashita is a recruiting officer for the Japanese military. Things are awfully slow these days, he confides, and getting slower.

No other Japanese prime minister since World War II took office under the kind of criticism that was heaped on Yasuhiro Nakasone in 1982, and none left office with as much praise as is being heaped on him these days. Condemned as a militarist, a "weather vane" without political principles and an adventurer in diplomacy who had sold himself to former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka to win power, Nakasone took office with the support of barely a third of the voters.

When North Korea launched a crude satellite-bearing rocket in August, it was not just a remarkable technological achievement by one of the world's poorest and most isolated nations. The test-firing of the multistage ballistic missile, which disintegrated over the north Pacific, created a political and military fallout that stretched from Tokyo to Washington to Beijing.