FOCUS: SDF's rise during 1990s behind Tamogami's confidence+

TOKYO, Nov. 15 Kyodo -
Controversy over the release of an essay about the war by sacked air force
chief Toshio Tamogami is still reverberating throughout the government, with
some experts saying the rise of the Self-Defense Forces in Japan over the past
decade or so led him to press his case so sternly.
Although Prime Minister Taro Aso in Washington dismissed the view that
right-wing ideology has rapidly risen in Japan, analysts suggest that relations
between the SDF and the political world have entered a crucial turning point in
postwar Japan.
The experts and some senior defense bureaucrats are concerned that former Air
Self-Defense Force Gen. Tamogami's action in challenging the government as a
high-ranking SDF officer could encourage other SDF personnel to seek a bigger
say in politics.
''Mr. Tamogami went out of control and his act was close to a coup,'' said
Atsushi Koketsu, an expert on modern Japanese political history.
Tamogami, 60, said he did nothing wrong when he released the essay in which he
denied that Japan was an aggressor in other Asian countries before and during
World War II and said even SDF personnel should have freedom of speech.
Tamogami even challenged the ban on the use of the right to collective
self-defense, a policy that postwar Japanese governments have adhered to.
Koketsu, a professor at Yamaguchi University, blasted Tamogami for ''adopting
the posture of a military officer in the prewar era.''
''If we allow top leaders of an armed organization to have 'freedom' to deny
the government's position, the system of civilian control would collapse,''
Koketsu said.
He also said that Tamogami's essay highlights the fact that SDF officers are
inclining toward joining hands with hawkish lawmakers in a bid to lift or ease
the legal restrictions on SDF activities under the U.S.-drafted Constitution.
In postwar Japan, SDF personnel are subjugated to the pacifist Constitution,
which renounces war and the use of force to settle international disputes and
even bans the possession of armed forces for that end.
It was not until 1997 that uniformed officers were allowed to have direct
contacts with bureaucrats and legislators to discuss defense-related measures
and call for implementation of them.
A Ground Self-Defense Force officer said, ''I remember that SDF personnel were
branded by some as 'tax thieves' when I was young.''
But the environment surrounding the SDF began gradually to change in the 1990s
when Japan started dispatching SDF units overseas mainly to help U.N.-led
peacekeeping operations in Cambodia and other regions.
''The alliance between Japan and the United States has become closer and that
helps raise the status of the SDF,'' said former Vice Defense Minister Haruo
Natsume. ''A growing number of Japanese have started supporting the SDF after
seeing their activities overseas and disaster relief missions.''
As a result, some SDF officers have become ''excessively self-confident'' and
''arrogant,'' said Natsume who formerly headed the National Defense Academy.
Natsume said some SDF officers dubbed ''political generals'' are trying to do
away with a system that restricts their access to the defense minister and
prevent the involvement of bureaucrats in various operations by SDF units.
Military journalist Tetsuo Maeda said he was shocked to read Tamogami's essay.
''I was stunned to learn that an elite officer who graduated from the defense
academy still has this kind of mentality.''
SDF Chief of Staff Adm. Takashi Saito and the heads of the ground, maritime and
air forces have joined the chorus of criticism of Tamogami since the essay was
released Oct. 31.
But senior Defense Ministry bureaucrats voiced concerns that views similar to
Tamogami's have already spread widely within the SDF, which has some 240,000
personnel.
Tamogami headed the Joint Staff College and launched the subject of ''views on
history and nation'' at the academy in fiscal 2003.
''What Mr. Tamogami taught was not history but ideology. It is not an easy job
to bring the current situation back to what it should be,'' one of the
bureaucrats said.
The Aso government is now being tested on the extent to which it can draw on
lessons from the row over Tamogami's essay in an already launched project to
reform the scandal-prone Defense Ministry and the SDF.
The ministry is expected to compile a package of measures to reform itself and
the SDF this year but uncertainty and skepticism are omnipresent as to whether
the ministry and the SDF will be able to shape up in the near future.
==Kyodo
2008-11-15 22:08:23