The Diet session that closed last Friday set a significant precedent for Japan's evolving security policy debates, paving the way for the first "wartime" deployment overseas of the Self-Defense Forces. That was the most important feature of the extraordinary session. What prompted the SDF move was, of course, the U.S. military campaign against terrorism following the Sept. 11 atrocity.
The swift passage of an antiterrorism bill, designed to provide logistic support for U.S. forces, reflected not only the urgency of international efforts to combat terrorism but also Japan's commitment to play a visible role in the U.S.-led campaign. No doubt the Diet, not just the government, was still smarting from the nation's failure to provide physical support in the 1991 Persian Gulf War. That is also why a measure to update the 1992 law on U.N. peacekeeping operations -- designed to ease the curbs on the use of weapons -- also sailed through the legislature without difficulty.
Times have certainly changed. Previously, security issues used to touch off raucous debates in the Diet, often leading to violence. Voting in plenary sessions took days, not hours, as the opposition parties resorted to all manner of delaying tactics. In the last Diet, nothing of the sort happened, despite the fact that the antiterror bill called for wider SDF activities than ever before. The official line was, and still is, that Japan is constitutionally prohibited from taking joint military action.