Last year, in the middle of the night, tens of thousands of Japanese protesters gathered outside their country’s parliament. Inside, legislators were engaged in a melee, as members of Japan’s biggest opposition party tried to grab a microphone from the chairman of a special parliamentary committee. The dissenters had the support of the protesters outside. With control of the microphone, the chairman could initiate a vote on a question that has divided Japan since its defeat in World War II: Should Japan reinstate its army’s ability to use force in conflicts abroad?
The ensuing vote at least nominally brought Japan’s decades of pacifism to an end. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe successfully argued that Japan needed to flex its muscles, given North Korea’s persistent belligerence and unpredictability, as well as neighboring China’s intimidatingly large army.
On Monday, however, Japanese forces were actually deployed — but not to any hot spots in East Asia. Instead, dozens of Japanese soldiers landed in Juba, the capital of South Sudan. By mid-December, 350 of them will be stationed there as part of a peacekeeping unit that will be authorized to use guns if needed to protect civilians, U.N. staff or themselves.
The Japanese contingent is made up of trained engineers whose main mission is to engage in construction projects, but there are also plans for them to take a more active role in peacekeeping under an expanded mandate stemming from the security measures approved last year.
