Published on January 20, 2020.
Drawing from Sankei-shō, this article discusses the danger of Japan’s communist takeover during the Korean War, the sixtieth anniversary of the revised U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, the post-Cold War international environment, the threats posed by China and North Korea, and the constitutional constraints on the Self-Defense Forces. Through Eiichi Tanizawa’s observation that the true fault lies with the weak country that makes its opponent think it can win, it asks whether Japan has the resolve to strengthen deterrence and show no opening to its enemies.

January 20, 2020
The same is true of disputes between nations: “The real fault lies with the weak country that makes the other side think it can win.” For example, a constitution that severely restricts the activities of the Self-Defense Forces must surely be an opening that enemies can exploit.
The following is from yesterday’s Sankei-shō.
This column, too, proves that the most decent newspaper today is the Sankei Shimbun.
To establish an anti-American revolutionary government in Kyushu and make it independent from Japan.
At the time of the Korean War in 1950, Japanese communists, acting in concert with the North Korean forces moving south, were aiming to “red-ify” Kyushu (Taniguchi Tomohiko, Lectures on Modern History for Japanese People).
Japan’s communization, which from today’s perspective may seem no more than a fairy tale, was at that time in danger of becoming reality.
Depending on the situation on the Korean Peninsula, Japan could have fallen either to the left or to the right.
It was such a dangerous era.
Japan’s path of bearing the postwar international order as a member of the Western camp was born from Japan’s wise choice and America’s cooperation.
The security treaty that forms the backbone of U.S.-Japan relations has now reached sixty years since its revision.
During that time, the Cold War ended, the Soviet Union collapsed, the war on terror began, and China’s rise in military and economic power was witnessed.
Amid these changes, the unity of the alliance was tested, refined, and has finally reached its sixtieth year.
Some say that, in this decade of violent changes in the international situation, the U.S.-Japan security arrangement has “evolved.”
Although limited, Japan has opened the way to exercising the right of collective self-defense.
The horizon of the U.S.-Japan alliance has expanded from the Far East region at the beginning to the Indo-Pacific, and further still to the world.
Even so, it is not as though Japan has no room left for effort.
The critic Tanizawa Eiichi wrote during his lifetime that one’s own opening invites the opponent’s desire to attack.
The same is true of disputes between nations: “The real fault lies with the weak country that makes the other side think it can win.”
For example, a constitution that severely restricts the activities of the Self-Defense Forces must surely be an opening that enemies can exploit.
Japan confronts threats to the international community, such as China and North Korea, at extremely close range.
This is not to say that Japan should initiate anything.
Rather, in order not to let them cross the line, Japan must strengthen deterrence and show no opening.
Can Japan hold its head high and say that the path chosen by postwar Japan was correct?
What the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty asks us is surely nothing other than that resolve.