ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses the new initiatives, focusing on present and prospective policy frameworks pertaining to national security as defined by concerned members of the politico-military establishment in Japan. It also discusses five basic issues: Korean security and how it is perceived by the Japanese politico-military elite; the new Asian political and strategic environment; the formation of a national self-consciousness; the basic objectives of politico-military strategy in Pacific Asia in the 1980s; and the probable configuration of power and policy that Japan will assume. During the three decades since World War II, Japan has built a modern, prosperous, consumer-oriented society that feels no real sense of threat by either military attack or military pressure. The principal objectives of Japanese policy have been to assure, first, that Japan becomes and remains a major economic power and, second, that Japan carefully avoids taking any politico-military responsibility beyond the nation's boundaries.