JAPAN: Self-Defense Force

For one hour last week, in a villa by the sea, Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida and Progressive Party Chief Mamoru Shigemitsu conferred on a measure to give Japan new world stature as a sovereign nation. Then the two party leaders, the most influential men in Japan, issued a joint statement that Japan’s defenses should be strengthened, “in view of the present world situation, and of the rising spirit of independence among Japanese people.” The plan:

¶Japan’s null National Safety Force, limited by Japanese law to the maintenance of “internal order,” should be renamed “Self-Defense Force,” and should be built up to oppose direct foreign aggression.

¶ U.S. garrisons stationed in Japan under the two-nation security pact should be “gradually reduced” as the Japanese force —armed by the U.S.—grows in strength.

By getting together on the program, Japan’s two major political parties hurdled one of the big obstacles that had stood in the way: the anti-rearmament sentiments of Japanese women, who were granted the vote by Japan’s postwar MacArthur constitution.” Neither party dared take on by itself the political risk of going against the women.