Published on April 21, 2019.
Based on a chapter originally published on October 5, 2015, this essay criticizes the contradictions and deception in the Democratic Party’s security policy and the irresponsible postwar political habit of depending on the self-sacrifice of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces.
Using such examples as the response to a North Korean spy vessel off the Noto Peninsula, the incident involving Chinese illegal entrants on Shimokoshiki Island, overseas PKO operations, and the helicopter water-drop mission over Fukushima Daiichi Unit 3, it argues that SDF personnel repeatedly risked their lives to fill legal and political vacuums.
The author sees the same spirit of evasion in the Democratic Party’s stubborn rejection of collective self-defense, and calls for Japanese security policy to be grounded in reality rather than abstract posturing.
2019-04-21
It was a textbook case of evasion of responsibility,
throwing onto the field the responsibility for sending personnel into the airspace above a nuclear plant where dangerously high radiation levels were expected.
I see the same spirit of contradiction and deception
in the Democratic Party’s stubborn refusal to recognize the right of collective self-defense.

The following is from a chapter I published on October 5, 2015.
Those who had long subscribed to the Asahi Shimbun must have thought that Yoshiko Sakurai, the author of this commentary, was a person of the right.
But since last August, when the Asahi Shimbun finally confessed the truly intolerable reality surrounding the comfort women issue…
the viciousness of Asahi…
viciousness born of childishness…
which had covered Japan throughout the seventy postwar years, was exposed in broad daylight.
Reporter Abiru of the Sankei Shimbun, who had noticed the strangeness of this issue from the beginning, splendidly accomplished what a newspaper reporter ought to do.
The years he devoted and the achievements he produced would, in America, deserve a Pulitzer Prize.
He remains without formal honors in Japan, but…
he made a major contribution to transforming the Sankei Shimbun into the most decent newspaper in Japan today.
What follows is from the front page of today’s Sankei Shimbun, which a friend told me about.
“The Contradictions and Deception of the Democratic Party.”
By Yoshiko Sakurai.
The security legislation has been enacted, but as Democratic Party leader Katsuya Okada stated in the plenary session of the House of Representatives on September 18, he insists that the security legislation should be repealed.
By denying the new laws, to what sort of situation does he intend to drag Japan’s security back.
A characteristic of Japan’s security system is that, as international circumstances change, reality has made it necessary for the Self-Defense Forces to take on certain missions, while at the same time deception has spread, as though refusing to acknowledge that reality and maintaining a rigid posture were itself justice.
The irresponsibility of politics, applicable to both the ruling and opposition parties, left multiple blanks and legal deficiencies in Japan’s postwar national defense system.
One element that barely compensated for them was the spirit of the Self-Defense Force personnel.
One example is the spirit of self-sacrifice shown by the Maritime Self-Defense Force in dealing with a North Korean spy vessel off the Noto Peninsula in 1999.
Yasukuni Itō, then navigation officer of the Aegis destroyer Myōkō, recalled:
“There was no doubt that the North Korean agents had powerful weapons, and if we boarded them it would have become a firefight.
But we did not even have bulletproof vests.
So as the least possible protection from bullets, we wrapped magazines from inside the ship around our stomachs and prepared ourselves.”
By chance, the other side’s engine started and they fled, so a boarding operation did not take place.
In 1997, twenty Chinese illegal entrants landed unlawfully and fled on Shimokoshiki Island in Kagoshima Prefecture.
Thirty Air Self-Defense Force personnel were dispatched, under the guise of field training, on their own responsibility and carrying no weapons whatsoever.
They detained all of the Chinese, but had those men been armed, there is a possibility that unarmed SDF personnel would have been killed.
In each of these cases, what stands out is that SDF personnel deployed, fully aware of the danger and staking their lives, in order to protect Japanese lives and territory.
The overseas PKO activities of the Self-Defense Forces are the same.
Any national defense or security policy that presupposes the sacrifice of SDF personnel, whether at home or abroad, is fundamentally wrong.
Another striking example of political irresponsibility that turned a blind eye to this point occurred at the time of the Great East Japan Earthquake.
On March 17, 2011, Defense Minister Toshimi Kitazawa said at a press conference, concerning water drops by SDF helicopters on the exploded Unit 3 of the Tokyo Electric Power Company’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant:
“The day before yesterday, in discussions with Prime Minister Naoto Kan, we reached the conclusion that ‘today is the limit for water spraying.’
The grave decision made by the Prime Minister and myself was judged by Chief of Staff of the Joint Staff Ryoichi Oriki, and was carried out on the basis of the Chief of Staff’s decision.”
In other words, the Defense Minister did not issue the order; instead, a subordinate was expected to infer the wishes of his superiors and make the decision.
The Democratic Party, which had always stressed the importance of civilian control, in one of the most important moments abandoned the responsibility of civilian politicians and threw onto the field the responsibility for sending personnel into the airspace above a nuclear plant where dangerously high radiation levels were expected.
It was precisely a case of evading responsibility.
I see the same spirit of contradiction and deception in the Democratic Party’s insistence on stubbornly denying the right of collective self-defense.