日本の安全保障経験-国民生存権論から総合安全保障論へ-

安全保障の理論と政策

抄録

The recent upsurge of the interest in the fundamental questioning of “what is security” has led to the reevaluation of the Japanese notion of security, which has emphasized its comprehensive nature. On the other hand, Japanese approach to security has been viewed as characteristically equivocal on the affairs related to the military.
This paper attempts to find out the sources of these characteristics of the Japanese notion of security in the historical experience of Japan from the period of the First World War up to the 1970s, when Japanese policymakers and scholars first expressed the Japanese notion of security in the words of “comprehensive security.” Interpreting the famous article by Konoye Fumimaro which denounced the Anglo-American pacifism as nonmilitary form of economic oppression, this paper reflects the basic threat perception of Japan in the interwar period. This threat perception was left unresolved because of the inability of the Japanese political regime to discover an optimal combination to achieve economic development and security within the international political-economic setting. Ultimately Japan resorted to the hopeless military method and was thereby forced to define its minimum core value in the word “Kokutai.”
The basic objective of Yoshida Shigeru who led the postwar period was to keep the “Kokutai” viable politically and economically, while making it compatible with the international environment. The result was the new Constitution which stipulated the Emperor as “symbol, ” a high priority on economic development and international liberalization, a desire to increase its internal policing capability while averting the remilitarization at least for the immediate future, and the dependence of Japanese external security on American protection. These policy choices succeeded in resolving the question of keeping domestic stability while preserving cultural core values and rapid economic development, but it also left ideas on military affairs ambiguous.
This ambiguity was set into a new context in 1960s and 1970s. Some scholars came to recognize the need for Japan, which was rapidly achieving an economic power status, to formulate a conscious security policy including, though not limited to, its military aspect. However, the role of the military in power politics was changing, as the nuclear capabality proved rather incapable of forcing the American will on the North Vietnamese. In addition, several economic shocks in the early 1970s made the Japanese public realize the interdependence of their lives with international politics, but the perceived threat was predominantly socio-economic. The notion of “comprehensive security” which stemmed from these setings thus contained an internal conceptual conflict: on the one hand, the subtle combination of method and objective, both military and non-military, is the required political skill for the contemporary security; on the other hand, the effort to decrease and, if possible, negate power politics may be the ultimate security policy in international society which becomes increasingly interdependent.