Commenting acidly on November's U.S. presidential election, American columnist George Will said all it showed was "whether Barack Obama or Mitt Romney has the smaller gigantic number of Americans not wanting him to be president." Substitute the names of Prime Minister-elect Shinzo Abe and outgoing Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda, and the remark applies equally well to Japan. An Asahi Shimbun telephone poll conducted immediately after last week's election asked respondents whether they thought Abe's Liberal Democratic Party owed its impressive victory to its policy platform or to voters' despair over the floundering government led by the Democratic Party of Japan. The latter, said 81 percent — as against all of 7 percent who consider LDP policies the decisive factor.

The adjective most frequently attached to Abe is "hawkish." He wants to rewrite the antiwar Constitution, toughen Japan's stance towards China and the two Koreas, and recast the Self-Defense Forces as an expanded and more frankly military "National Defense Force."

Does the LDP's triumphant return to power a mere three years after it was triumphantly thrown out mean Japan is now a "hawkish" country? If so it's a sea change. World War II was a sharp lesson to two postwar generations. Militarists of the 1930s had grossly overreached themselves and destroyed the nation. Their disgrace was absolute. History proffered a rare second chance, and Japan seized it. One generation's heroism was the next generation's brutality. Fighting, empire-building and dying for the Emperor were out; pacifism, technology and business were in. "Japan Inc.," "economic animals" — that's how postwar Japan looked to the outside world. Secure beneath the U.S. "nuclear umbrella," Japan held its defense spending down to around 1 percent of gross national product, a fraction of what its trading partners and rivals were spending. It became the world's number two economy. It seemed unfair. There was much grumbling about Japan's "free ride."