By Sebastian Maslow
The East Asia crisis gives Shinzo Abe the momentum to advance sweeping changes to Japan’s national security policy.
Since returning as prime minister in December 2012, Shinzo Abe has pushed hard to revamp Japan’s security institutions. The revision of his country’s pacifist constitution as a prerequisite to enable participation in collective self-defense is at the core of his reform drive. In promising to “take Japan back” from the institutional constraints of the country’s postwar regime, Abe has made a constitutional amendment targeting the military-banning Article 9 his primary objective in (re)establishing a strong Japan. However, Tokyo’s new conservative establishment has shifted towards a more comprehensive strategy, introducing institutions for intelligence and security policy coordination. Essentially, Abe has laid the groundwork for a new security framework that enables Japan to take part in collective self-defense within the framework of the U.S.-Japan alliance.
On November 26, the Diet’s lower house approved a state secrecy bill which aims at tightening the government’s control over information sensitive to state legislation. The bill enables Japan’s government to designate 23 types of information relating to diplomacy, counter-terrorism or defense as “special state secrets.” Government officials, such as the personnel of Japan’s Coast Guard who had released video footage of a Chinese fishing boat colliding with two Japanese patrol vessels in 2010 near the disputed Senkaku (in Chinese Diaoyu) islands, could face up to 10 years imprisonment under the new law. However, the government has not only refrained from providing a clear definition of what constitutes a state secret, the new legislation also remains ambiguous as to who is to decide what information counts as secret. While awaiting approval from the Diet’s Upper House, the bill has triggered massive public criticism, especially among Japan’s mass media, as journalists fear state intervention in media activities and in consequence an undermining of Japan’s postwar democracy.
Read the full story at The Diplomat