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Kōmeitō’s security ideals and collective self-defense: betwixt pacifism and compromises

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Abstract

After much deliberation, Kōmeitō, the junior partner in the second Abe Cabinet, supported the Cabinet Decision on the reinterpretation of the Japanese Constitution, which allowed for a limited version of collective self-defense. Since an expansion of the boundaries of Japanese security policy is not easily aligned with Kōmeitō’s pacifist ideals, the objective of this paper is to identify the rhetorical strategies employed by Kōmeitō in the process towards the Cabinet Decision. Through a reading of newspaper articles over a one and a half year-period, I find eight rhetorical “commonplaces”—commonsensical arguments—that the Kōmeitō leadership activated in their attempt to convince the public that Kōmeitō’s policy positions and political strategies were reasonable and to persuade the Liberal Democratic Party to rethink its position. An important finding is that most of the commonplaces Kōmeitō employed were about the form of the policy process rather than the content of the specific policies agreed upon.

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Notes

  1. While the Cabinet decision marked the new interpretation from the government’s side, two bills concerning self-defense were discussed in the Diet from May and passed in September 2015.

  2. This situation of being a junior party together with a much larger party is not unique for Kōmeitō; recent examples include the Liberal Democrat’s coalition with the Conservative Party in the UK (2010), the Free Democratic Party’s coalition with CDU/CSU (2009–2013) in Germany, the Center Party and the Socialist Party’s coalition with the Labor Party (2005–2013), and the Progress Party’s coalition with the Conservatives (2013) in Norway.

  3. Ten years after the establishment of the looser platform Kōmei Political League.

  4. Thanks to one of the anonymous reviewers for suggesting a more thorough illustration of the sources used in this study. It is definitely an important part of qualitative textual methods to illuminate the sources used for analyses and conclusions.

  5. Note that these sets are not exclusive; see Fig. 2 for exclusive sets of key words.

  6. While Ehrhardt [7] reports that Gakkai leaders refer to the people as minshu, Kōmeitō leaders use the term kokumin in public debates. This is probably due to Kōmeitō leaders adapting to the national political discourse, where the people are usually referred to as kokumin.

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Acknowledgments

First and foremost, I want to thank Wrenn Yennie Lindgren for sharing her great mind, her strong insights in research design, and her fluent language skills. I am grateful to Scandinavia-Japan Sasakawa Foundation for financial support. Thanks to two anonymous reviewers for helpful suggestions to improve the paper. I also want to thank Kacper Szulecki and Øivind Bratberg for fruitful discussions on theory and methodology in political (and social) science(s). Thanks to Aike P. Rots and Halvor Eifring for providing very helpful feedback and comments on an earlier version. I am grateful to Reiko Abe Auestad for our many discussions on interpreting Japanese sources; her help is and has always been invaluable. Finally, I owe Naomi Yabe Magnussen a major thanks for her extraordinary efforts into making the research experience as smooth as possible.

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  1. ECON Consulting Group AS, Oslo, Norway

    Petter Y. Lindgren

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Correspondence to Petter Y. Lindgren.

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Lindgren, P.Y. Kōmeitō’s security ideals and collective self-defense: betwixt pacifism and compromises. East Asia 33, 233–254 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12140-016-9256-8

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