ABSTRACT
The United States (US)-Japanese security relationship is a product of Japan's defeat and occupation by the United States in the aftermath of World War II. The bilateral security relationship is based on three pillars: the 1947 Japanese Constitution, particularly Article 9; the Treaty of Mutual Security and Cooperation, signed in 1951; the Mutual Defense Assistance Agreement of 1954. Despite recurring controversies over the US military bases in Japan, the passage of US nuclear weapons through Japanese territory, and the status of Okinawa, the security relationship remained intact throughout the 1960s. In the Japanese prism neither the Soviet Union nor China poses the kind of military threat, immediate or potential, that has often characterized US strategic doctrine. Strategic integration would inevitably lead to a revision of the Japanese Constitution and a renegotiation of the existing Mutual Security Treaty.
