Japan's Defense Guidelines
remote conflicts, such as low-level rebellions in Mindanao, East Timor, and Bougainville. Any one of these areas could turn into a major threat to East Asian stability. And if Japan wants to see itself as Asia's leader, it had better be prepared to do so in good times and bad.
How do the Japanese people feel about the guidelines? The modern Japanese public has a fairly consistent history of opposition to the SDF. In 1957, only 17% of the Japanese public thought it should be increased in strength. In 1959-60, when Japan was negotiating its first bilateral defense treaty with the United States, students rioted.
As the SDF slowly grew (defense spending was capped at 1% of GNP in 1967), public opinion grew slightly more favorable over the next few decades. The number of people who had a good or somewhat good impression of the SDF rose from 59% in 1969 to 77% in 1988. But even if approval ratings were up, faith in the SDF remained low. A 1988 poll showed that only 28% said they would "support the SDF" in the event of a war, and only 4% said they would join the SDF. Instead, 23% of respondents opted for "passive resistance," and 23% said they would "flee to a safe location."
Reaction to the guidelines being debated currently is equally lukewarm. In a recent Asahi Shimbun poll, a bare plurality voice support for the guidelines, with virtually all of those choosing not "strongly support," but the category loosely translated as "if I had to say one way or the other, I guess I would support." An equal number oppose the guidelines (in equally wish-washy terms), and about a quarter have no idea.
These opinion polls suggest that contemporary Japanese aren't particularly raring to conquer Asia. So why is the rest of Asia so worried? Memories from the war run deep, and many Asians resent that Japan rose so quickly from the ashes of the war while the rest of Asia struggles. Korea, a colony of Japan from 1910-1945, and China, which would like to see itself as the regional power, particularly oppose any Japanese military expansion, and have repeatedly protested Japan's military growth. Other nations, particularly Southeast Asian nations that escaped from the frying pan of European colonization into the raging fire of Japan's "East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere," also recoil at the notion of Japanese troops abroad.
Despite domestic
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