ABSTRACT
The United States, which retains military bases and thousands of troops in Japan, was the most obvious of the allies, so the legislation allowed Japan to join US-led military interventions. While Japan’s post-war constitution imposed constraints on the use of the Self Defense Forces, the prime minister has potentially great authority to deploy the military. Japan’s military has a post-war record of being heavily involved in public works, which provides a means of establishing a domestic presence and overcoming historically rooted public distrust. Media outlets, both in Japan and internationally, uncritically hailed the deployment and declared that it signalled a new relationship between the military and civil society. Widespread and deep-going public hostility to military power and to military involvement in civilian life, resulting from Japan’s pre-World War II history of militarisation of civil life and imperial aggression, has so far prevented the passing of specific military call-out legislation.
