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Paper short abstract

This paper explores the civil defense issue in the process of postwar Japan’s rearmament. It sheds new light on how the onset of the Cold War, the legacy of the total war system, and democracy influenced postwar Japanese policymakers’ defense conceptions.

Paper long abstract

This paper explores the civil defense issue in the process of postwar Japan’s rearmament. Existing studies maintain that Japanese conservative politicians in the early 1950s argued for Japan’s rearmament, and that their activities had an important impact on the creation of Japan’s regular defense forces, the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF), in 1954. These studies, however, focus on the process leading up to the creation of the JSDF and thus tend to underrate conservative politicians’ planning of civil defense, which laid a foundation for early postwar Japan’s defense conceptions.

In contrast to existing studies, this paper focuses on the civil defense issue, arguing that leading conservative political figures, such as Ashida Hitoshi, Kishi Nobusuke, and Nakasone Yasuhiro, recognized the creation of regular defense forces as a first step toward the establishment of postwar Japan’s defense system and thus made their efforts to militarily mobilize Japanese ordinary people to maintain Japan’s domestic peace and order against communist threats. After the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950, they increased their fear of the deterioration of Japan’s internal security caused by communist infiltration, and simultaneously worried about the weakness of Japan’s internal security capabilities. Moreover, they criticized Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru’s decision to rely on US forces for post-occupation internal security and to suppress domestic left-wing movements to address communist threats, arguing that democracy was essential for safeguarding Japanese society against such threats. Thus, by searching for the creation of civil defense organizations resembling militia associations in Western countries, such as the United States, they sought to strike a balance between military mobilization to safeguard local communities and workplaces against communist activities and the promotion of democracy among the Japanese. Although civil defense organizations were not established in postwar Japan, exploring their attempts sheds new light on how the onset of the Cold War, the legacy of the total war system, and democracy influenced postwar Japanese policymakers’ defense conceptions.