2
2
Introduction
This chapter examines the responses of Japanese mass opinion to Tokyo’s
participation in America’s “War on Terror.”
It focuses on the dispatch of the Maritime
Self Defense Force (MSDF) ships to the Indian Ocean in Fall 2001, their continued
operations there, and the dispatch of the Ground Self-Defense Forces (GSDF) and Air Self
Defense Forces (ASDF) to Iraq in 2003-2004.
Secondary foci include views of the threat
posed by international terrorism and opinions about American foreign policy.
While addressing these issues this chapter considers whether the war on terrorism,
and most especially the events of 9-11, has changed, encouraged gradual evolution, or
reinforced preexisting Japanese beliefs about the efficacy of using force.
It finds that
Japanese public opinion is gradually evolving away from rigid and ideological pacifism
and toward a view best captured by defensive realism.
For the sake of placing Japanese
public opinion in comparative perspective, this paper analyzes comparable data on
American and German public opinion.
Germany appears to be a plausible defensive
realist peer while American opinion shows greater faith in the utility of military force,
suggesting greater proximity to what will be described as offensive realism.
For data, this chapter utilizes publicly available media and government sponsored
opinion polls.
This chapter suffers from at least two methodological problems that dog
any researcher interested in Japanese public opinion.
The first problem is what I would
Convention