When the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan\u2019s (CDP) Chikage Koga said that volunteers enlisting in the Self-Defense Forces are economically disadvantaged, she rekindled a longstanding debate over the SDF\u2019s characterizations in political discourse\u00a0\u2014 exposing a widening gap between public support and the political debates that continue to shape Japan\u2019s civil-military relations.<\/p>\n
The most recent episode came on Monday during an Upper House Budget Committee session when the CDP lawmaker declared that \u201cChildren who join the Self-Defense Forces are economically challenged.\u201d She added, \u201cChildren who are well off don\u2019t join the Self-Defense Forces.\u201d<\/p>\n
Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi responded immediately by labeling her comments as \u201ccompletely untrue.\u201d He added that her comments were \u201cprejudiced and unacceptable.\u201d<\/p>\n
Koga withdrew her remarks and apologized, and the CDP leadership reprimanded her.<\/p>\n
This was not the first instance of such rhetoric in parliament, a reflection of a broader political debate that will continue to play out regarding potential constitutional amendment and the state of civil-military relations in Japan.<\/p>\n
The remarks have already stirred debate on the matter.<\/p>\n
Democratic Party for the People chief Yuichiro Tamaki called Koga\u2019s the statements \u201cunacceptable,\u201d adding, \u201cAlthough they were quickly retracted, this is a symbolic manifestation of how such views on the Self-Defense Forces and national defense have, in many ways, hindered the opposition parties from advancing proper security policies.\u201d<\/p>\n
Former Upper House lawmaker and retired Ground Self-Defense Force officer Masahisa Sato said: \u201cThe biased view that \u2018they join the Self-Defense Forces because they\u2019re poor\u2019 is an insult to the members who serve with pride, and it is something that can never be tolerated.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, former Niigata Gov. Ryuichi Yoneyama, who is a\u00a0member of the opposition Centrist Reform Alliance,\u00a0came to Koga\u2019s defense, using his own father\u2019s example\u00a0\u2014 the fourth son among six siblings in a farming family in Kyushu\u00a0\u2014 to argue that \u201cthere are indeed cases of commissioning for economic reasons.\u201d<\/p>\n
The intensity of the reaction reflects the unique place the SDF occupies in Japan\u2019s postwar political landscape. Koga\u2019s remarks and the subsequent response are another chapter in an ongoing debate over postwar civil-military relations in Japan.<\/p>\n
For decades, public attitudes toward the country\u2019s uniformed services were shaped by distrust and even disdain, stemming from disillusionment with the Imperial Japanese military, anti-war sentiment and political discourse dominated by the left. For decades, critics and parts of the public derisively referred to the SDF as zeikin dorob\u014d, or \u201ctax thieves.\u201d<\/p>\n
Underlying much of this rhetoric was a continuing political dispute over the constitutionality of the SDF itself.<\/p>\n
Opposition parties, including the former Japan Socialist Party (later the Social Democratic Party) and the Japanese Communist Party, long refused to recognize the SDF as constitutional. This position persisted until the mid-1990s…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan\u2019s (CDP) Chikage Koga said that volunteers enlisting in the Self-Defense Forces…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42229,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[5706,6033,2894,360,8,236,2303],"class_list":["post-42228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-japan","tag-aid","tag-cdp","tag-constitution","tag-defense","tag-japan","tag-ldp","tag-sdf"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42228\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}