JAPANESE REARMAMENT: FUKUDA S LEGACY, O H IRA S CHOICE

Japanese foreign policy has entered anew phase，reflecting changes within the international system which have altered the paramount assumptions upon which that policy had previously been formulated. Specifically，the leaders of Japan for three decades could rely on the primacy of American military power at the global level and a high degree of interest mutuality between themselves and successive United States’ administrations. Certain corollaries of this perceived reality created a world in which Japanese foreign policy operated without major constraints: (1) the strategic protection o f the United States’ nuclear force made a unilaterally sufficient self-defense capability unnecessary; (2) the availability of raw materials and export markets, combined with the relatively unimpeded flow of goods and capital across international borders safeguarded by the Bretton Woods system, provided Japan with a stable international economic framework within which to reorder and reconstruct its economy; and (3) the maintenance of a semblence of domestic political consensus regarding foreign policy was facilitated by unified perceptions of the international system and the continued dominance of a single political party. By the mid-1970s ， however, this overriding assumption and its corollaries had been overshadowed by developments at several levels, causing the leaders of Japan to objectively reevaluate the protection theretofore assumed from United States’ defense pledges. The results of that reevaluation were initiatives on the part of Japan which have put that nation squarely on the road toward a gradual rearmament. Newly-elected Prime Minister Ohira has thusly inherited a legacy of a stronger military policy than seemed conceivable at the beginning of this decade. Perhaps the greatest single choice before his govern ment is the question of how far to proceed down the road followed by his predecessor.