Securitization and the Reframing of Postwar Japan

The concept of securitization, initially coined in the banking system, was later transposed into International Relations (IR) to theorize security issues such as military threats or terrorism. The mainstream approaches to international relations identify insecurity as an objective response to an objective threat. In a departure from these positivist approaches, securitization was redefined as a social construction that highlights how powerful actors legitimize a security issue as such and justify the need for a consequent response. Some IR scholars have referred to the sociology of Geertz and Bourdieu to redefine securitization as a set of interrelated practices and posit that threats are inseparable from the intersubjective representations by which societies come to know them. We aim to further refine this theoretical framework and challenge the shortcuts taken by IR and political science, such as narrow interpretations of the willingness to fight. Through a mixed analysis of newspapers, quantitative surveys, ethnographic observation and in-depth interviews with Japanese politicians, influential experts and intellectuals, we examine the case of Japan before and after the Russian aggression against Ukraine in 2022 and place it within the broader perspective of Postwar Japan (i.e., the societal framework of the 1947 Constitution). According to the World Values Survey, the Japanese regularly express the lowest rate of willingness to fight in the event of foreign aggression, which is consistent with the pacifism professed by Japan’s postwar Constitution. The Japanese government has nevertheless continued to reinforce its military (formally called “self-defense forces”). As we show, although the Russian invasion of Ukraine helped to justify another significant increase of Japan’s defense budget, the perception of China’s military threat and the scenario of a “Taiwan contingency” have been more determinant in Japan’s securitization toward a revision of its postwar pacifist frame.