ABSTRACT
The strength of anti-militaristic and anti-nuclear attitudes at the mass level means that, perhaps more than in other industrial democracies, government leaders in Japan have tended to employ evasive political rhetoric in discussing military affairs. In this way, any sense of a radical departure from the status quo can be eschewed, and popular acquiescence in defence and security policies maintained. Gaining public acquiescence in these matters is facilitated by one plain fact: the public cannot check at first hand how their taxes have been spent to build up the nation’s military might, nor do they—nor, for that matter, do their political and military leaders—possess a reliable yard-stick with which to measure any purported enhancement in national security resulting from a boost in military spending or a build-up in military power. To the overwhelming majority of those in whose name the military is strengthened, therefore, ‘reality’ in so far as security is concerned is what political leaders say about it. For ‘reality’ in this sense is embedded in the information environment of which their articulations are an integral part. 1 It is from this perspective that we need to take account of the role that language plays in legitimizing defence and security policies at the mass level in Japan.
