For the past decade, Japanese foreign and security policy has been confronted with a series of external and national events conducting to a new rationale on international and national defense posture. While the political and legislative legacy since the end of the Second World War had been rather balanced with compromises to the pacifist norm and to the bilateral security relationship with the United States, the law-making process on defense issues has been strengthened, since the early 1990s, following the pragmatic/realist assessment that Japan needs new legal instruments, to react to indenfied potential external threats, and a larger autonomy while confirming but clarifying the terms of the US-Japan military cooperation within the international contribution to peace. The current resolute engagement of Japanese policy-makers on defense and security issues is part of the progessive normalization of the country that could signify, if the basic posture is maintained, the confirmation of Japan as a civilian power with defensive military tools.

Régine Serra is Invited Researcher at the Institute for Security Studies of the European Union (ISS-EU), and also associated to the research of the Institut d'Asie orientale. She is Junior Lecturer at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales (INALCO) in Paris, and at Lille1 University.