Hiding in Plain Sight? Japan's Militarization of Space and Challenges to the Yoshida Doctrine

摘要

Japan's security discourse - despite accelerating shifts in its security stance over the last two decades, and more recently, under the Abe administration - remains dominated by views of essential continuity and maintenance of the "Yoshida Doctrine." The case of Japan's militarization of space is used to create a framework for systematically dismantling default assumptions about the durability of the Yoshida Doctrine. The militarization of space serves as a driver of broader trends in Japan's security policy manifested in the procurement of dual-use assets in launch systems, communications and intelligence satellites, and counterspace capabilities necessary for active internal and external balancing with the US-Japan alliance; the strengthening domestically of security policymaking institutions; and the jettisoning of anti-militaristic norms. Japan's increasingly assertive military stance, bolstering of the US-Japan alliance and cessation of hedging, facing down of China's rise, and departure from the Yoshida Doctrine as grand strategy are thus revealed as hiding in plain sight.