Description
Japan’s technical security capabilities have changed. The creation of the Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade, the ongoing conversion of its two Izumo-class helicopter carriers into light aircraft carriers, and its planned procurement of four-hundred Tomahawk cruise missiles (part of a larger ambitious plan to double its defence spending), empower Japan with the technical military capabilities to participate in expeditionary military operations alongside US forces in the Indo-Pacific; or, to use the nomenclature of the US-Japan Alliance, to ‘wield its own spear’. Nevertheless, there is a semantic bent to the Japan security debate which emphasises Article Nine, and the broader ‘exclusively defence-oriented defence’ framing of Japan’s security policy, to argue that Japan remains unable to wield its new security capabilities as a ‘spear’. In this paper, I argue that these arguments overlook the important societal context which was responsible for encouraging the strict enaction of Article Nine to constrain the Japan Self-Defense Forces during the Cold War; one which is changing in the post-Cold War period. Using a New Durkheimian understanding of civil society, I compare cultural artefacts from the two periods to demonstrate a societal shift that reduces Article Nine’s influence and thus its relevance in the Japan security debate.
