In the preceding chapters we have examined militarization and demilitarization in contemporary Japan paying attention to the intertwined issues of ‘identity’ and ‘normality’. This approach was taken in order to shed light on the ‘soft side’ of these two processes. The experience of being demilitarized during the Occupation has meant that, for the cold war conservative regimes, Japanese (re)militarization was at heart a process of restoring legitimacy to the military as an instrument of state policy, especially during the period we have examined. Of course, this is not to deny the importance of the ‘hard side’ aspects of militarization, as without the essential ingredients the military could not be normalized. As seen with the increase in Japan’s military expenditures, quantitative and qualitative improvement in weaponry and deeper integration into US nuclear strategy, these aspects were particularly salient during the 1980s. It is rather to emphasize the need to take due account of the erosion of the legal and normative constraints imposed on employing the SDF as a ‘normal’ military force, as seen more clearly in the early 1990s, when the ban on the SDF’s overseas despatch was scrapped. This ‘normalization’ is a necessary step for those political forces struggling to transform Japan into a military big power, enjoying the fruits but shouldering the burden of big powerism, where the military is employed in upholding a regional and global order as defined under the hegemony of the United States, if not as a step towards making Japan an independent military power.1 In this sense, the proposal of Ozawa Ichirō for Japan to cooperate with the United Nations should be understood more as a call to contribute to the United Nations under the hegemony of the United States than as a Japanese commitment to strive for the realization of multilateral interests seeking to embrace those outside the Security Council. Needless to say, in the first place the same path can be taken in seeking to make Japan an independent military power.2