The Origins of Japan’s Arms Export Prohibition

Executive Summary

MAIN ARGUMENT

In 2022 the Fumio Kishida administration pledged to double down on defense capabilities, given the increasingly severe international security environment that Japan faces. The administration focused attention on softening Japan’s long-standing restrictions on arms exports because it perceived an urgent need to enhance the indigenous defense industry, which is suffering from decline. To assess the feasibility of this initiative, it is critical to assess the durability of Japan’s norm on the prohibition of arms exports by examining its origins in 1976. Newly available historical evidence suggests that arms export restrictions were not directly derived from Japan’s postwar antimilitarism; rather, they were the result of an expedient political compromise. Once this compromise was established, the domestic political divide, the negative reputation of the international arms market, and the lack of a pressing need by the government and industry to liberalize the regulations contributed to building the norm against arms sales.

POLICY IMPLICATIONS

• All the factors that contributed to the perpetuation of the norm prohibiting arms exports are dissolving, forecasting major changes in Japan’s arms export policy in the years to come.
• The current structure of Japan’s domestic politics will not have an inflammatory effect on the debate about arms exports like it did in the 1970s.
• The recent rapid growth in international arms transfers could influence Japan’s domestic defense industry to pursue greater exports, as was the case in the 1970s.
• The relative decline of the domestic defense industry could also encourage this sector to seek international options more actively than it has in the last five decades.

Hirohito Ogi is a Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Geoeconomics (Japan), where he focuses on defense and national security. He is also a PhD student in the Graduate School of Media and Governance at Keio University.