Japan’s Tokyo Shimbun, in an editorial recently published on the occasion of the ninth anniversary of the adoption of the security-related law, said that though the possibility for Japan to enter war has become seriously stronger as it has become able to exercise the right of “collective self-defence” and the possession of the capability for striking enemy bases has been added to the law, the government continues to expand armaments under the signboard of “exclusive defence”, still talking about “within the range of exclusive defence”, and asserted that such a move must not be allowed any longer.

“Exclusive defence” is the favourite phrase that the successive Japanese authorities have chanted whenever they argued for the policy on building a military power.

The annual defence white papers, which have been issued since 1976, have specified that exclusive defence means the posture of passive defence strategy, based on the spirit of the constitution, with which Japan uses its defence capabilities only when it has been militarily attacked by other country and confines the use of the capabilities to the minimum needed to defend itself, and that the Self-Defence Forces shall not possess long-range missiles, strategic bombers, aircraft carriers, etc. to this end.

The three documents related to security the Japanese authorities adopted in late 2022, including the national security strategy and the national defence strategy, contain the expression “exclusive defence”. And the then Prime Minister Kishida repeatedly emphasized that “exclusive defence is the basic idea of Japan’s military security policy”.

But Japan’s much hyped “exclusive defence” is a mere show.

After 1980, Japan abandoned the “three principles of tanker planes” that do not allow inflight refuelling, the possession of tanker planes and tanker plane drills and installed refuelling equipment in main fighters like F-15 and F-2. At first, it had four tanker planes and increased the number to seven and expanded its air operation radius to over 1 000 to 1 500km away from the mainland.

In addition, under the pretext of “defence of marine traffic routes” it expanded the marine operation radius to 1 000 to 2 000n•miles.

It is well-known that Japan has dispatched its troops overseas in real earnest on the occasion of aggressive wars started by the US and disputes in different regions since the end of the Cold War.

Especially, it enacted the security-related law in 2015 and legalized the overseas dispatch and activities of troops as the main mission of the SDF. In recent years, it has fully enforced the war policies consistent with the pre-emptive strike in an aggressive way, including the steady and radical increase in war funds, possession of different kinds of long-range missiles and remodelling of an escort ship into an aircraft carrier.

It has also put spurs to the modernization of military hardware.

For example, the latest attack submarine Chogei (giant whale) to be officially commissioned as the main warship of the Japanese Maritime SDF was launched on October 4. It is the fifth of eight attack submarines of Taigei (big whale) type planned to be built till 2030. Reportedly, this ship has been improved further than existing ones in terms of displacement, underwater cruise capability and search function and it is also designed to launch heavy torpedoes and anti-warship missiles.

It is as clear as day what mission the SDF, which is transformed into an “all-out attack” type, not an “exclusive defence” type, will have.