Asked at Japan’s June 23 Foreign Ministry press conference about reports that Ukrainian defense firms want to build combat drones in Japan, spokesman Guo Jiakun barely addressed Ukraine, turning the question instead into an indictment of Tokyo’s rearmament.
Guo charged that Japan is pursuing remilitarization at full throttle—fielding offensive long-range weapons, loosening its curbs on lethal-weapons exports, and standing up a combat-ready force—in order to slip free of the limits set by its Constitution, international law, and its long-stated “exclusively defense-oriented” principle. A country that calls itself peace-loving, he said, is moving in the opposite direction, and the world should be on guard against “the malevolent emergence of neo-militarism in Japan.”
Article 9 of Japan’s U.S.-drafted 1947 postwar constitution renounces war and the maintenance of armed forces. (Japan calls its military a Self-Defense Force.) Beijing points to the pacifist clause in the constitution to identify each expansion of Japanese military power as a breach of the postwar order.
