Japan's military held large-scale exercises at the foot of Mount Fuji on Tuesday as Minister of Defense Itsunori Onodera cited "deepening uncertainties" in the region as justification for expanding the role of Japan's armed forces at home and abroad.
Onodera said Japan's military would increasingly be called upon to participate in international peacekeeping operations and bilateral activities with allies.
The statement follows the recent unveiling of the largest Japanese warship to be built since World War II; plans to create a marine corps, a national security council, and possibly develop the capability to launch pre-emptive strikes against enemy ballistic missile sites.
All of these are in line with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's clearly stated policy goal of "escaping the postwar regime."
A Postwar Japan
What Abe calls the postwar regime was in fact the Allied nations' consensus on how to construct a new security arrangement for East Asia that would prevent a repeat of World War II. It was outlined in the Allies' 1945 Potsdam Declaration, and then written into Japan's Constitution by U.S. military officers under the command of Gen. Douglas MacArthur.
They took a two-pronged approach. First, Japan was disarmed, and its constitution forbids it from either waging war or maintaining a standing army. Second, the constitution was revised to emphasize popular sovereignty, democracy and human rights in order to prevent the re-emergence of militarism.
Japan has interpreted its constitution to allow the creation of "self-defense forces" and to allow their deployment in peacekeeping operations overseas.
Heard on NPR