MASAKI TOMIYAMA’S fight seems quixotic. He was happy for his son to join one of the world’s biggest, best-equipped armies, but cannot abide the idea that he might have to do any fighting. “I was very angry when I heard my son was being trained to kill people,” says Mr Tomiyama—so angry, in fact, that he decided to sue the Japanese government for violating the country’s pacifist constitution. “I will never allow him to go to war—that’s not why he signed up.”
Japan’s constitution, cobbled together by the Americans in a few hectic days in 1946, prohibits the maintenance of land, sea or air forces. But at the height of the Cold War it seemed otherworldly for a rich ally of the West, with unresolved territorial disputes with all its neighbours, to have no armed forces at all, so in 1954 the government set up the “Self Defence Forces”.
The SDF was to exist “to protect the peace and independence of Japan”. But it was controversial all the same. For decades the biggest opposition party wanted it abolished. Such was the controversy, recalls Noboru...Continue reading
from Asia http://ift.tt/2kugUd9
EmoticonEmoticon