Tokyo: Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is facing some of the toughest challenges of his record-setting tenure, with persistent flare-ups of the coronavirus, an economy mired in recession and a public fed up with his government's handling of the crises.

Yet his administration is focusing on a different threat, one that lines up with a long-running preoccupation: the prospect of ballistic missile attacks by North Korea or China.

This month, Abe's political party began publicly considering whether the country should acquire weapons capable of striking missile launch sites in enemy territory if an attack appeared imminent.

Japanese PM Shinzo Abe, right, lays a flower during a memorial service marking the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II in Tokyo on Thursday.Credit:Getty Images

Such a capacity would be unremarkable for most world powers. But for Japan, which on Saturday commemorated the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II — and 75 years of renouncing combat — the proposal is fraught. In considering loosening restrictions on the ability to attack targets in other countries, the party has revived a protracted and politically sensitive debate.

The discussion is taking place as Japan finds itself caught between China, whose rising military aggression has reverberated across Asia, and the US, whose once-ironclad commitment to guaranteeing the region's security has come into question.

In a sign of the sensitivities around the proposal, Defence Minister Taro Kono spoke evasively about the idea of acquiring long-range missiles during an interview at the Defence Ministry.

Japanese Defence Minister Taro Kono.Credit:AP

"Logically speaking, I won't say it's a zero per cent" chance, said Kono, who noted that any such acquisition would need to include complex radar and surveillance systems and the training of military personnel to use them. "The government hasn't really decided anything yet."

Kono's tiptoeing reflects the Japanese public's strong identification with the country's pacifist constitution, which was put in place by American occupiers in 1947 and limits military action to instances of self-defence.

Yearslong efforts by Abe to revise the clause have met with strong opposition. Komeito, the parliamentary coalition partner of the Prime Minister's party, the Liberal Democrats, has indicated that it does not support the acquisition of long-range missiles.

A soldier fires an anti-tank missile from a light-armoured vehicle during the Japan Ground Self-Defence Forces’ annual live fire exercise in May.Credit:AP

"In the Japanese context, it can be scandalous" to make such a proposal, said Narushige Michishita, director of the Security and International Studies Program at the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies in Tokyo. "People get freaked out when people start speaking about 'strikes'."

But given the increasing risks, including North Korea's expanding nuclear arsenal and China's muscle-flexing during the pandemic, Michishita and other security analysts said it should be only natural for the country to consider bolstering its defences. In a poll this month by NHK, the public broadcaster, half of respondents said that Japan should acquire weapons that could stop missile attacks before they are launched from enemy territory.

The current discussion was prompted by the government's decision in June to cancel a plan to buy a US missile defence system, known as Aegis Ashore, that would have been deployed in northern and western Japan. The governing party said it would need to explore alternatives after the cancellation of the system, which would have served as a shield to intercept incoming missiles.

Kono said that although Aegis Ashore represented a good form of defence for Japan in principle, the cost of hardware adjustments, necessary to ensure that rocket boosters would not fall on Japanese territory, would be prohibitive. Given that expense, he said, "I don't think it's worth it".

But while Japan has decided against the US missile system, Kono said it was important to "send a clear message" to North Korea about the country's alliance with the US and "our resolve about protecting Japan against any missile offensive from North Korea."

Under the alliance, the US has traditionally assumed the role of providing offensive capabilities while Japan has stuck to purely defensive activities.

"The old paradigm of the US-Japan alliance is that Japan wears the 'shield' and hosts the 'sword'," said Euan Graham, senior fellow for Asia-Pacific security at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Singapore, invoking a commonly used metaphor for the stationing of about 55,000 US troops in Japan.

But "that paradigm has been breaking down for many years," Graham said, a trend that has only accelerated as the Trump administration pushes allies to assume more responsibility for their own defence.

Graham noted that Australia, another US ally in the Pacific, had recently announced military spending plans for long-range missiles. South Korea also recently negotiated a loosening of missile guidelines imposed by the US that would allow it to build rockets that could be applied to long-range missiles.

Japan, where three years ago mobile phones beeped with warnings of North Korean missiles flying high overhead, must make similar calculations. With the possibility that US President Donald Trump could be elected to a second term, Japan was "seeking to leave defence options open," said Mira Rapp-Hooper, a senior fellow for Asia studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. "Japan increasingly has to provide for its own defence by Japanese means."

The discussion of long-range missiles goes as far back as 1956, when the government ruled that it had the legal right to send missiles into enemy countries to counter an attack on Japanese territory.

At the time, Ichiro Hatoyama, who was serving as prime minister, famously said: "I don't think the constitution means that we just sit and wait for death."

In 2003, Shigeru Ishiba, then the defence minister, detailed the conditions under which Japan could launch missiles toward another country such as North Korea: if the enemy's missile was fulled and loaded onto a launcher, and its intention to attack Japan was apparent.

Such criteria can lead to murky decisions and questions about when, exactly, Japan could deploy its own missiles.

"Japan does have to in some ways walk a fine line legally because of their own laws and their policies" about allowing only for self-defence, said Jeffrey Hornung, an analyst at the RAND Corp. "If you see a rocket fuelling on a launchpad, you have no idea where it's going, and if you take it out you've just started a war."

The New York Times

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