The move to throw away its post-Second World War chains is by no means imminent but as public opinion polls and anecdotes from younger generations suggest, Japan's coming of age is inevitable:
A quiet pride is evinced in the dispatch of Japan's Self-Defense Forces troops for peacekeeping in Iraq even though the polls say a bare majority opposes the deployment. Says a business executive: "That's their profession; that's what they've been trained for." A debate over revising the pacifist Constitution, particularly Article 9 — that forbids the use of military power to resolve disputes — is under way. Some say an amendment is unnecessary, that a mere reinterpretation would permit Japanese forces to take part in collective security....On a wider front, Japanese say their nation should be more active internationally. Another executive says: "Japan should make more of an international contribution." Many Japanese still wince over criticism that they contributed only money ($13 billion) to the allied effort in the Persian Gulf War of 1991 while the soldiers of other nations died in battle. Japan has begun drafting a new five-year plan on defense that will focus on forces for peacekeeping and reconstruction in war-torn countries. The Foreign Ministry, meanwhile, is preparing its delegation at the United Nations to take a seat on the U.N. Security Council next year.
Older Japanese point to a generational change in which younger Japanese, meaning those born after the end of World War II in 1945, are entering the establishment that governs Japan. They are said to be more assertive and less constrained by today's rituals. Hiroshi Nakanishi, a 41-one year old political scientist at Kyoto University, was quoted in a Tokyo newspaper: "We instead prefer to be rational, and we think it's all right to change what can no longer meet the times."
Conditions dictating Japan's obligation to pacifism have long since dissipated. The democratic, capitalist ideals introduced by the American-led occupation of 1945-1952 are now tradition — the emperor firmly entrenched in constitution and culture as titular, the specter of authoritarianism extinguished. With the Cold War's end thirteen years ago and Islamic terrorism's rise as the new immediate threat to free nations, the United States is no longer needed as protector while self-sufficient regional allies are exactly what America needs. For decades the Japanese have viewed military matters with a combination of embarrassment and revulsion, unable to clearly see the defense of self-governance apart from their militarist era and the reparations and international shame that followed. But democracies at war are far different in conduct and purpose than dictatorships. It's time the the Japanese distinguish between the two.