At a time when East Asian military tensions have focused on the Korean peninsula, very little attention has been paid to the continuing militarisation of Japan by right-wing premier Shinzo Abe.

Japan is a key military player in north-east Asia both as a base for US military forces and for the much less well-known role played by its own Self-Defence Forces (SDF).

The SDF is in essence Japan’s military, although, according to Article 9 of the country’s constitution, which states that “land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained,” military forces are in fact illegal. Nonetheless, the SDF has around 310,00 personnel both regular and reserve and is equipped with thousands of aircraft, tanks, ships and artillery.

Despite the long-term stagnation of Japan’s economy, where any GDP growth in excess of 1 per cent is hailed as a success, Abe has continually increased Japan’s military spending at the expense of social welfare, a key issue for a country with a rapidly aging population.

Last December, Abe’s cabinet proposed a draft budget of 5.2 trillion yen (£34billion). This would make 2018 the fourth year in succession where military spending has hit a record high and the sixth year of successive increases.

The 2018 budget draft includes costs to introduce the Aegis Ashore ground-based anti-missile system, to purchase crash-prone Osprey military aircraft, F35 stealth fighter jets, aerial refuelling tankers and Global Hawk spy drones.

The Japanese Communist Party (JCP) has warned that the Abe government is intent on a “game-changing military build-up.”
On top of this, Japan also increased annual spending on the US military based in the country to 789.7bn yen (£5.2bn) in 2017, another record high, the JCP daily Akahata reported in December.

Last year, US Defence Secretary James Mattis praised Japanese government spending as a “model of cost-sharing” among its allies.

The Japanese government pays for the US military in three segments:

• General expenses for the US military in Japan
• US military relocation projects
• Japan-U.S. Special Action Committee on Okinawa (SACO).

SACO was set up in the mid-1990s after public anger erupted following the abduction and rape of an Okinawan schoolgirl by US servicemen. The Clinton administration agreed to reduce the overall total of land occupied by the bases from 18 per cent to 15 per cent and over time to relocate some of the installations elsewhere on the island to placate anti-base protests.

It has been estimated that the Japanese taxpayer picks up around 70-75 per cent of the bill for “hosting” US forces in Japan.

The increase in US military-related spending was mainly due to the rising costs of the US military base relocations, which includes the Henoko base construction in Okinawa and the relocation of carrier-borne aircraft to the US Marine Corps Iwakuni base from its previous base in Atsugi.

The Japanese government also built 262 housing units costing 70-80 million yen per unit (about £460,000) for 3,800 US military personnel and their family members who will move to Iwakuni.

Akahata also revealed that the Defence Ministry’s Okinawa bureau spent around £165m to counter anti-base protests from August 2014 to October 2017.

While ordinary Japanese taxpayers are expected to fund the US war machine, there are some Japanese who are doing rather well from their own.

Abe’s Liberal Democratic Party has long been linked with Japan’s major conglomerates, which not only fund the party in general but also channel cash to favoured factions within the historically clique-ridden LDP.

Since Japan’s military does not technically exist — it has been described as the best-camouflaged army in the world — Japan has never been a major importer of foreign arms. Instead major Japanese corporations established armament subsidiaries to equip the SDF with tanks, ships, planes and weaponry. These lucrative government contracts handsomely paid off their political donations.

More than four years ago, these companies were prohibited from selling weaponry overseas at least partly, with the intention of keeping the visibility of Japan’s military build-up as low as possible.

However, Abe’s strident determination to openly remilitarise the country led to the formation of the Japanese defence ministry’s Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Agency (ATLA) which promotes Japanese arms exports to Asian and Middle Eastern nations.

At a symposium last November, Hayashi Mitsuko, ATLA international affairs chief said that Japan will host more bilateral negotiations so that military-industrial corporations can have more trading opportunities.

SDF mouthpiece Asagumo Shimbunsha likewise described ATLA activities as “a unique effort made jointly by the public and private sectors hoping to expand business opportunities”.

Japan participated last year, for the first time, in the Dubai Airshow, where ATLA exhibited and promoted a new C-2 transport aircraft manufactured by Kawasaki Heavy Industries.

Japanese communists have been at the forefront of publicising Japan’s militarisation. On December 7 last year, JCP member of the House of Councillors Satoshi Inoue, forced the Defence Ministry to reveal the names of the companies that had taken part in the bilateral business meetings. Those attending included Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Hitachi Corporation, military clothing supplier Kuraray, and trading house Marubeni Corporation in addition to the key military industrial corporations Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, IHI Corporation, and Kawasaki Heavy Industries.

At the same parliamentary meeting, Inoue condemned the arms deals, saying that a severe humanitarian crisis has been unfolding in Yemen where the civil war was heightened and prolonged due to air strikes carried out by Saudi Arabian and UAE-led forces.

The JCP deputy criticised Japanese arms exports for “giving a helping hand to the attacks, resulting in worsening the humanitarian crisis.

“Japan should restrict itself to contributing to diplomacy and humanitarian support,” he added.