Japan's New Outline for a Defence Plan

On 17 December, the same day the Prime Minister of Japan requested the reelected Governor of Okinawa to agree to the transfer of the US Hutemma base to Henoko, and got refused, the Japanese Cabinet approved a new Outline for a Defence Plan. It is largely based on a report by an advisory committee. When the report was submitted on 27 August, this writer wrote an article which can be approached under the title "Thoughts for Japan's New Defence Plan" dated 23 September in Observer Research Foundation(Analysis). I will add a few things more on the document.
It stresses a shift from the 'basic defence capability', a concept which has been adhered to since the first Outline in 1976, to the 'mobile defence capability', by which the SDF will be quickly mobilized against certain conceived external threats. It will be easily understood that, after the trouble with China over Senkaku islands in September and the North Korean bombardment on South Korean territory in November, these two are considered to be the threats. Or, that is how the Outline, in fact the whole process leading to it, would like to have us believe, instead of talking how the territorial questions should have been discussed between the interested parties, and how the violence could have been averted. To make the matter worse, both China and DPRK are not capable of knowing how their own behaviour have strengthened the fear of their military among the Japanese people, and have made them susceptible to the warlike mantras. This is a fatal flaw of dictatorship.
Anyway, in accordance with the above shift, the SDF will have less tanks and artillery from now on, but more submarines and anti-missile aegis ships. The SDF, however small in number, will be deployed in the outer islands of Okinawa. Hints are dropped here and there that ways and means will be under consideration on how to send the SDF out more easily for international peace-keeping operations. There is an indication that rules concerning the export of weapons will be loosened.
All these measures have a doubtful validity in terms of the Article 9 of the Constitution discussed before in these columns, and are likely to lead to a vicious circle of more mutual arming. If I may quote from my own book, Japan(National Book Trust, India, 2006), the role of Japan in the world can be seen in 'the fact that nobody in the last sixty years has seen any weapon in any remote corner of the world that was exported from Japan, and nobody has heard of any person who was killed by the Japanese military'(p.178). This is what everybody wishes to see in the New Year 2011, and in the years to come.