Creating Japan's Ground Self-Defense Force, 1945–2015

Creating Japan's Ground Self-Defense Force, 1945–2015
Author: David Hunter-Chester
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 315
Release: 2016-11-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1498537901

Creating Japan’s Ground Self-Defense Force, 1945–2015 is a timely contribution to postwar Japan security studies. It is the first comprehensive account of Japan’s post-1945 army, including a comprehensive institutional history, together with the evolution of roles and missions and the adoption of successive professional identities. The organizational history is embedded within a thorough examination of Japan’s own defense policy, as well as of America’s policy of alliance with Japan. The book examines and challenges assumptions about the drafting and adoption of the War Renunciation clause of Japan’s postwar Peace Constitution, Article 9, which uniquely not only renounces war, but the arms to wage war. Thus Japan’s army is not called an army, but the Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF). The work also examines the place of an army and soldiers in the formation of Japan’s national identity after its last devastating war, and explores the impact of constitutional, legal and policy restrictions, as well as the power of the legacy of the still-largely vilified Imperial Japanese Army on GSDF members who seek to serve because “there are people we want to protect.” The study is rounded by an examination of the place of soldiers in Japan’s popular culture, focused on movies, manga and anime, assessing the impact on the GSDF of a public imagination that most often ignores or villainizes soldiers, though ending with a note that some positive images of soldiers and of the GSDF members themselves have started to appear in the last few years. The book’s author, a retired U.S. Army soldier who spent more than twenty years working, studying and training with the GSDF, offers a broad-ranging exploration of a unique organization. This work is extensively researched, using English and Japanese sources, and will appeal to anyone interested in Japanese security studies, alliance studies, and military imagery in Japanese pop culture, as well as to students of military history, international security, international relations, and cultural identity.

The Self-defense Forces and Postwar Politics in Japan

The Self-defense Forces and Postwar Politics in Japan
Author: 佐道明広
Publisher:
Total Pages: 374
Release: 2017-03-27
Genre: Japan
ISBN: 9784916055743

"In 1947, Japan eternally renounced war and the possession of armed forces with its constitution. How, then, did the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) survive, moreover, evolve over the ensuing 70 years into the prominent presence it is today? Sado Akihiro reviews the JSDF's history chiefly from the viewpoint of restrictions imposed on it by civil officials of the national bureaucracy, based on lessons gleaned from the arbitrary conduct of the military in pre-World War II days. He also explores the financial constraints placed on the JSDF in the form of a percentage of the GNP. This book traces the inside story of U.S.-Japan relations and Japan's defense policy. It attempts to shine a light on the true state of the JSDF in the midst of new challenges that put it at a crossroads, including post-9/11 international terrorism, North Korean nuclear development, and China's increased military presence in Asia"--Back cover.

National Police Reserve

National Police Reserve
Author: Thomas French
Publisher: Global Oriental
Total Pages: 330
Release: 2014-06-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 9004266828

Based upon years of research undertaken in the US Occupation archives, this book provides a history of Japan’s National Police Reserve (NPR), the precursor of today’s Ground Self Defense Force (GSDF). It is the first ever comprehensive and exclusively focused history of the force in any language. The book examines the domestic and international origins of the force, the American constabulary model upon which it was based, the NPR's character and operation, and its evolution into the GSDF. This volume provides numerous insights and fresh perspectives on the character of the NPR, the origins of the SDF, the US Occupation of Japan and Cold War era US-Japan relations.

Japan’s Military Power

Japan’s Military Power
Author: Robert D. Eldridge
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2020-01-24
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 1527546136

This book is an insider’s account of the problems facing the Self-Defense Forces (SDF), Japan’s postwar military, authored by the country’s leading submariner, Hideki Nakamura. Specializing in the submarine fleet, he became an ace commander, in addition to serving as an analyst and professor in security studies. During his career, he became increasingly troubled by the SDF’s ability to fight due to legal, political, and operational restrictions placed upon it. This book, a translation of his 2017 bestseller, is a must-read for those interested in Japan’s military and its ability to partner with other countries.

The Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force

The Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force
Author: Robert D. Eldridge
Publisher: Springer
Total Pages: 421
Release: 2017-01-21
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1137551941

Based on extensive Japanese-language materials, this book is the first to examine the development of Japan’s Ground Self-Defense Force. It addresses: how the GSDF was able to emerge as the post-war successor of the Imperial Japanese Army despite Japan’s anti-militarist constitution; how the GSDF, despite the public skepticism and even hostility that greeted its creation, built domestic and international legitimacy; and how the GSDF has responded to changes in international and domestic environments. This path-breaking study of the world’s third-largest-economic power’s ground army is timely for two reasons. First, the resurgence of tensions in Northeast Asia over territorial disputes, and the emphasis recent Japanese governments have placed on using the GSDF for defending Japan’s outlying islands is driving media coverage and specialist interest in the GSDF. Second, the March 11, 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami has focused global attention on the GSDF as Japan’s lead disaster relief organization. This highly informative and thoroughly researched book provides insight for policy makers and academics interested in Japanese foreign and defense policies.

In Defense of Japan

In Defense of Japan
Author: Saadia Pekkanen
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Total Pages: 408
Release: 2010-08-12
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0804775001

In Defense of Japan provides the first complete, up-to-date, English-language account of the history, politics, and policy of Japan's strategic space development. The dual-use nature of space technologies, meaning that they cut across both market and military applications, has had two important consequences for Japan. First, Japan has developed space technologies for the market in its civilian space program that have yet to be commercially competitive. Second, faced with rising geopolitical uncertainties and in the interest of their own economics, the makers of such technologies have been critical players in the shift from the market to the military in Japan's space capabilities and policy. This book shows how the sum total of market-to-military moves across space launch vehicles, satellites and spacecraft, and emerging related technologies, already mark Japan as an advanced military space power.

Defenders of Japan

Defenders of Japan
Author: Garren Mulloy
Publisher: Hurst Publishers
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2021-09-30
Genre: History
ISBN: 1787387305

Japan’s post-war armed forces are a paradox, both embarrassing remnants of the past and valuable repositories of experience. This book charts the development of the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) from 1954 as both unorthodox military institutions and servants of a civil society that decries militarism. Investigating JSDF contributions to Japanese and global security, the evolution of such contributions during and after the Cold War, and their possible reconfiguration for Japan’s security needs ahead, Garren Mulloy offers insight into the Forces’ past, present and future. He explores the characteristics and contradictions of Japanese policy, including novel approaches in response to an increasingly assertive China, the latent threat of North Korea and contributory pressure from the US. Though the American alliance remains the core of Japanese security, new partnerships and international overtures will also shape the Forces’ place in Prime Minister Abe’s new vision of ‘proactive contributions to peace’. Defenders of Japan deconstructs how the JSDF have adapted and will continue to adapt within domestic norms, caught between unresolved legacies of Japan’s imperial past and a dynamically shifting balance of future global power.

Defense of Japan 1945

Defense of Japan 1945
Author: Steven J. Zaloga
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 97
Release: 2011-12-20
Genre: History
ISBN: 1780962193

In 1945, with her fleet destroyed and her armies beaten, the only thing that stood between Japan and an Allied invasion was the numerous coastal defence positions that surrounded the islands. This is the first book to take a detailed look at the Japanese home island fortifications that were constructed during 1941–45. Utilizing diagrams, specially commissioned artwork, and sources previously unavailable in English, Steven Zaloga examines these defences in the context of a possible Allied invasion, constructing various arguments for one of the greatest 'what if' scenarios of World War II, and helping to explain why the Americans decided to go ahead with a nuclear option.

Japan’s Decision For War In 1941: Some Enduring Lessons

Japan’s Decision For War In 1941: Some Enduring Lessons
Author: Dr. Jeffrey Record
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Total Pages: 105
Release: 2015-11-06
Genre: History
ISBN: 1786252961

Japan’s decision to attack the United States in 1941 is widely regarded as irrational to the point of suicidal. How could Japan hope to survive a war with, much less defeat, an enemy possessing an invulnerable homeland and an industrial base 10 times that of Japan? The Pacific War was one that Japan was always going to lose, so how does one explain Tokyo’s decision? Did the Japanese recognize the odds against them? Did they have a concept of victory, or at least of avoiding defeat? Or did the Japanese prefer a lost war to an unacceptable peace? Dr. Jeffrey Record takes a fresh look at Japan’s decision for war, and concludes that it was dictated by Japanese pride and the threatened economic destruction of Japan by the United States. He believes that Japanese aggression in East Asia was the root cause of the Pacific War, but argues that the road to war in 1941 was built on American as well as Japanese miscalculations and that both sides suffered from cultural ignorance and racial arrogance. Record finds that the Americans underestimated the role of fear and honor in Japanese calculations and overestimated the effectiveness of economic sanctions as a deterrent to war, whereas the Japanese underestimated the cohesion and resolve of an aroused American society and overestimated their own martial prowess as a means of defeating U.S. material superiority. He believes that the failure of deterrence was mutual, and that the descent of the United States and Japan into war contains lessons of great and continuing relevance to American foreign policy and defense decision-makers.

Japan's Aging Peace

Japan's Aging Peace
Author: Tom Phuong Le
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Total Pages: 388
Release: 2021-06-22
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0231553285

Since the end of World War II, Japan has not sought to remilitarize, and its postwar constitution commits to renouncing aggressive warfare. Yet many inside and outside Japan have asked whether the country should or will return to commanding armed forces amid an increasingly challenging regional and global context and as domestic politics have shifted in favor of demonstrations of national strength. Tom Phuong Le offers a novel explanation of Japan’s reluctance to remilitarize that foregrounds the relationship between demographics and security. Japan’s Aging Peace demonstrates how changing perceptions of security across generations have culminated in a culture of antimilitarism that constrains the government’s efforts to pursue a more martial foreign policy. Le challenges a simple opposition between militarism and pacifism, arguing that Japanese security discourse should be understood in terms of “multiple militarisms,” which can legitimate choices such as the mobilization of the Japan Self-Defense Forces for peacekeeping operations and humanitarian relief missions. Le highlights how factors that are not typically linked to security policy, such as aging and declining populations and gender inequality, have played crucial roles. He contends that the case of Japan challenges the presumption in international relations scholarship that states must pursue the use of force or be punished, showing how widespread normative beliefs have restrained Japanese policy makers. Drawing on interviews with policy makers, military personnel, atomic bomb survivors, museum coordinators, grassroots activists, and other stakeholders, as well as analysis of peace museums and social movements, Japan’s Aging Peace provides new insights for scholars of Asian politics, international relations, and Japanese foreign policy.