To be sure, contemporary Japanese militarism is different than militarism in the U.S. and other countries. First, the Japan Self-Defense Forces (SDF) are not legally an army. Japan cannot have an army because the Constitution clearly states, "land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained." If it were an army it would be "war potential" and unconstitutional.
So the SDF is not an army? Well, empirically it is, but it is not according to the government. The state walks a tightrope. On one hand, it wants its army. On the other hand, it does not want to raise the ire of the Japanese public. The state learned its lesson back in 1960 when it rammed through the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security – the security agreement that allows the U.S. to maintain military bases in Japan to this day.
The U.S. government, of course, has never been satisfied with the treaty or with the constitutional limits placed on the SDF. U.S. officials have repeatedly urged Japan to undermine or revise its war-renouncing Constitution. During the Cold War, they told Japanese officials to be realists and face the threat of the Soviets and Red China. After the Cold War, they told them to be realists and face the threat of North Korea and terrorists. But Japanese officials are realists; they are domestic realists. They know that a majority of the public has never been in favor of revising the peace plank of the Constitution.
But does constitutional antimilitarism only exist as political theory or does it have practical benefits? Consider that there are no military courts in Japan. SDF members who violate the law are subject to the civilian judiciary like everyone else. Without an army or military courts, the Japanese state cannot usurp civilian judicial authority, a tactic of authoritarian regimes and democracies alike. Consider, for example, the militarization of justice in the United States after 9/11. U.S. citizens were branded as "enemy combatants," stripped of their right to a lawyer, detained by the military indefinitely without charges, and subjected to inquisitional interrogation. Such measures are legally impossible in Japan.
