Student Blog: Japan's Turn to Pacifism

For most of today’s young Americans, modern Japan brings to mind anime, sushi, and all things strange. Probe people for something about Japan with a bit more historical significance and two locations will immediately come forward: Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima. Studies of US-Japan relations for most Americans begin with the former and end with the latter. Studies of US-Japan relations for most Japanese begin with the latter. It thus surprises many Americans when they learn that Japan is constitutionally prohibited from going to war.

Imperial Japan surrendered on August 15, 1945, accepting the terms laid out in accordance with the Potsdam Declaration. To reach this point, Japan had not only endured the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but also the wholesale firebombing of most of its major cities, which killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. Even then, the higher ups in the military wanted to continue the fight. It was only the intervention of Emperor Hirohito himself that finally compelled the military to surrender…Why did they go so far?

The Potsdam Declaration called for, in addition to relinquishing conquered territories, Japan’s “unconditional surrender.” To the higher ups, this meant the dismantling of the Japanese imperial nation-state as it had existed since 1868, and further, the potential dissolution of the imperial system in its entirety. For the last 1,000 of the roughly 2,600 years (a good portion likely mythical) of the imperial line, the emperor had not been much more than a symbol, often to legitimize the rule of powerful samurai families. The Meiji Restoration of 1868 put an end to feudal Japan and samurai rule, creating a modern, constitutional state with the emperor at its center. Vestiges of samurai culture would persist, but lay dormant as Japan modernized over half a century, only coming back to the fore as the military took control of the country in the 1930s.

MacArthur with Hirohito

Though the allied forces did end up abolishing the “Empire of Japan” during the occupation from 1945 to 1952, in a turn of events that surprised even Emperor Hirohito himself, the U.S. decided not to force his abdication and abolish the imperial system. This was not, of course, out of some respect for the ancient tradition, but for—much like the samurai of old—utilizing the imperial institution to more easily maintain control over and carry out reforms of occupied Japan.

Indeed, Emperor Hirohito had one of the most unique experiences in human history: from being worshiped as a living god and the bedrock of the militarist state that compelled its citizens to fight and die in his name, to being “the symbol of the State and of the unity of the People, deriving his position from the will of the people with whom resides sovereign power” (Constitution of Japan). Moreover, this new Japanese “State” would make pacifism one of its most important values, expressed through Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution established in 1947, which fundamentally renounces war as a political tool of the state.

Article 9. Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.

However, with the victory of the Communist Party of China in the Chinese Civil War in 1949 and the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, the U.S. backtracked its position on the matter and Japan would create a “Self Defense Force” in the 1950s consisting of land, sea, and air forces with a legal status that views it as an extension of the national police force prohibited from engaging in conflict unless Japan is directly attacked. Extensions of the size and role of the Self Defense Force remains a contentious issue within Japan and the call to revise Article 9 by the current ruling party are as of now widely unpopular among Japanese. Time will tell if the push of certain domestic politicians coupled with changing geopolitical conditions, a rising China and a potential retreat of the US military from the Asia-Pacific region will lead Japan to once again have an unrestricted military. 

By Matt D'Elia