Course Description

This course aims to review several issues on historical backgrounds of the national security policies of contemporary Japan, including the defeat in World War II followed by dissolving of the military forces of Imperial Japan, the establishment of the Japan Self-Defense Forces and its PKO missions, the Abe cabinet’s constitutional interpretation of the right of collective self-defense and an operational shift towards the southwest by the Japan Self-Defense Forces currently in progress. Students are required to think out the historical backgrounds regarding the peculiarities of the Japan’s exclusively defense-oriented policies, which has leads the post-war administrations to evade an exercise of the right to collective defense.