Japan has long been known for its commitment to a pacifist foreign policy as stipulated in Article 9 of the post-World War II constitution. Despite some opposition, for much of Japan’s postwar history there has been a mainstream foreign policy consensus to maintain a security treaty with the United States and limit rearmament. In the years since the end of the Cold War, however, there has been a concerted movement urging constitutional revision in order to legalize militarisation. This project has been driven by younger, more radical conservatives at odds with the moderate conservative establishment. This talk examines the rise of a hawkish foreign policy ideology, and its intellectual underpinnings in the (re)emergence of a reactionary and culturally traditionalist conservatism which styled itself as the ‘New Right’ (Shin-Uyoku) at the height of Japan’s postwar economic power. It demonstrates that the arguments for state power, sovereignty, and rearmament are entrenched in a culturally particularistic logic, and identifies the alliances and divergence among varying ideological factions and their interlocutors that make up the politics of rearmament on the Japanese Right.
