The “Pacifist Integralism” Myth: Japan’s Evolving National Security Approach Since the 1992 Peacekeeping Law and the Japan Socialist Party’s Narrative and Political Shift

The end of the Cold War had a two-pronged effect on Japanese domestic politics and security policies. First, it contributed to the end of the Liberal Democratic Party’s 39-year-long dominance in domestic politics. Second, it coincided with a first overhaul of Japan’s long-standing approach to international security, as the country government adopted a fist law to allow the dispatch of the Japan Self-Defense Force abroad. These two elements created the condition for the de facto end of Japan’s integralist pacifist stance and the shift toward the so-called proactive contribution to peace which has become key to Japan’s grand strategy in the last two decades. Significantly, this shift was not favored only by the long-time ruling political party, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), but rather, by a multiplicity of actors, including opposition parties, amidst the LDP’s first hegemonic crisis of the 1990s. Through a close reading of archival documents, political memoirs, and secondary literature, the chapter reviews the political context which led to the approval of the 1992 Act on Cooperation with United Nations Peacekeeping Operations and subsequently moves to discuss the role of the Japan Socialist Party (JSP) in the aftermath of the approval of the new legislation and its changing approach to the 1946 Constitution, the Japan Self-Defense Force (JSDF), and its involvement in UN-sanctioned peacekeeping operations (PKOs).