Japan should possess a military not just to defend itself, a role to which it has been restricted for nearly 60 years, but to play a greater role in global security, the main ruling party said on Friday.
Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's Liberal Democratic Party proposed revising the country's pacifist constitution, which has not been changed since it was written by U.S. Occupation authorities just after World War Two.
The draft may touch nerves in Asia, where bitter memories of Japan's wartime atrocities run deep. Ties with China and South Korea, already strained, deteriorated further after Koizumi last week visited a shrine for war dead seen by Beijing and Seoul as a symbol of Japan's past militarism.
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Wow. So the moment finally seems to have come. Japan begins to slip off the leash placed on it in 1945. This is a pretty damned profound moment too. Most people will ignore it and move on. Most people don't realize that if this passes, everything as far as security interests in Asia just changed.
No, that's an understatement.
It put up a big glaring halon search light of a sign the size of Manhattan and pointed it at everyone in Asia's faces.
Japan is back.
If this passes, expect that there will be a ramp up of military spending over the next decade. Indeed, with Japan's economy being 30% of the US' alone...expect some big things to come out. Being an island nation, expect the Japanese Navy to be the big gun here.
Now will Japan be the US' subordinate ally? Or will she begin to chart her own way?
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