Speaker: Lawrence Repeta | Member, Japan Civil Liberties Union, and former Professor at Meiji University

Moderator: Kyle Cleveland | Associate Professor & ICAS Co-director, Temple University Japan

Overview:

Article 9 of Japan’s “Peace Constitution” famously prohibits “the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes” and also prohibits the maintenance of military forces and other “war potential.”  With the adoption of revisions to Japan’s national security laws in 2015 including authorization of “collective self-defense,” many observers considered Article 9 dead.  But the constitution is the supreme law of the land and the words of the constitution that took effect in 1947 have never been changed. 

The immediate postwar era is now a distant memory.  Today Japan confronts a radically changed strategic environment.  War in Ukraine, the American attack on Iran, the ever-present threat of Chinese action against Taiwan, and other potential threats to international stability all drive reasonable leaders to strengthen national defense.

The American bombs that fell on Iran remind many of the “shock and awe” bombing of Baghdad by American forces a little over twenty years ago.  During the Iraq War, Japan responded to American demands by deploying a small contingent of Self-Defense Forces to Iraq.  Most Japanese thought this violated Article 9, but the Koizumi administration went ahead anyway.  We must consider whether this scenario will play out again.

The 2015 revisions to national security laws constitute the most significant legal development related to the potential offshore deployment of Japan’s military forces.   When Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi eschewed longstanding “strategic ambiguity” in November 2025 to clearly say that an attack on Taiwan would empower Japan to take military action, she relied on the 2015 revisions, particularly language that authorizes the use of military force when “an armed attack against a foreign country that has a close relationship with Japan occurs, and as a result, threatens Japan’s survival.”

This talk will trace the tortuous path from the immediate postwar to the present, highlighting major episodes that shape today’s understanding of Japan’s national security law, from the historic 1959 Supreme Court ruling to the present. 

As always, the future is uncertain.  What we do know is that Japan, along with its neighbors, plans to dramatically increase defense expenditures.  We can all hope that the new weapons will never be used.

Lawrence Repeta has served as a lawyer, business executive and law professor in Japan and the United States.  He is best known in Japan as the plaintiff in a suit that made constitutional history by opening Japan's courts to free reporting. He is the author of numerous works on Japanese law, including Japan’s Prisoners of Conscience: Protest and Law During the Iraq War, (Routledge, 2023), “The Struggle to Protect Individual Rights in Postwar Japan: Seven Decades of Progress,” in Laura Hein (ed.) The New Cambridge History of Japan (vol. 3) (Cambridge University Press, 2023), and “The Fight for Open Government in the Heisei Era,” in Jeffrey Kingston (ed.), Japan in the Heisei Era (1989—2019) (Routledge, 2022). Professor Repeta has served on the board of directors of several NGOs and as a professor of law at Meiji University.  He was the director of the Temple University Law School in Japan from 2001 through 2003.