Japan’s navy is three times the size of France’s and Britain’s combined, yet most people think it a defenceless nation. This book unravels that paradox.

Japan’s post-war armed forces are a paradox, both embarrassing remnants of the past and valuable repositories of experience. This book charts the development of the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) from 1954 as both unorthodox military institutions and servants of a civil society that decries militarism.

Investigating JSDF contributions to Japanese and global security, the evolution of such contributions during and after the Cold War, and their possible reconfiguration for Japan’s security needs ahead, Garren Mulloy offers insight into the Forces’ past, present and future. He explores the characteristics and contradictions of Japanese policy, including novel approaches in response to an increasingly assertive China, the latent threat of North Korea and contributory pressure from the US. Though the American alliance remains the core of Japanese security, new partnerships and international overtures will also shape the Forces’ place in Prime Minister Abe’s new vision of ‘proactive contributions to peace’.

Defenders of Japan deconstructs how the JSDF have adapted and will continue to adapt within domestic norms, caught between unresolved legacies of Japan’s imperial past and a dynamically shifting balance of future global power.