War Prompts a Major Shift in Japanese Policy : Security: Leaders are realizing that the nation can no longer sit idly by while the U.S. tends to the world.

More than any event since the end of World War II, the Gulf War has prompted a sea change in Japanese thinking and policy.

For the first time, a realization that Japan can no longer sit on the sidelines while the United States bears the burden of tending to the world has swept the country’s leadership. Fears that inaction could isolate Japan and cost the nation its American alliance--its only real security guarantee--have spurred eye-popping changes.

They include:

* The first post-World War II commitment to any overseas military undertaking--$11 billion--and a new willingness to move away from a single-minded focus on trade and economics toward a political-security role in the world.

* The first postwar authorization to send military forces overseas.

* A consensus, embracing even the Socialists, that Japan must become involved in overseas disputes and that contributing not only money but people is necessary.

* A surprising ebb of the “limitless pacifism” that has prevailed since defeat in World War II.

* An end to political taboos that took root after 1945 against discussing military affairs.

“We have arrived at a turning point to decide whether the structure of the postwar constitution (that bans the maintenance of troops and the use of force to settle international disputes) is destroyed or not destroyed,” Socialist Chairwoman Takako Doi told Parliament.

“The nation is pondering the question: Should we remove some constitutional restraints on playing a small military role abroad, or should we cling to the . . . pacifism this nation has pursued under the postwar constitution?” the Japan Times said in an editorial.

“This is the first time for the government or the people to think about our security role in international society,” said Atsuyuki Sassa, a former vice minister of defense.

Throughout the 1960s, the Vietnam War spurred tens of thousands of Japanese to pour out into the streets, often violently. This time, unlike Germany, where anti-war demonstrations have attracted up to 170,000 people, Japanese protesters have gathered only in relative handfuls. Only once have more than 1,000 turned out.

To Americans, Japanese public opinion support for the U.S.-led war against Iraq may appear vapid--42% in support and 42% against, according to the Kyodo News Agency poll.

But in a 1965 poll by the newspaper Asahi, 75% opposed the American bombing of North Vietnam; 4% agreed with it. In a 1970 Asahi poll, a mere 22% were willing to tolerate the Vietnam War as “unavoidable,” while 61% called it “not unavoidable.” The Asahi did not even ask whether anyone “supported” the war.

Once the fountainhead of post-World War II pacifism, Japan’s mass media, for the first time, are now criticizing the pacifist Socialists for merely opposing war without making proposals for peace. The Socialists’ entreaty to the youth of Japan “never again to take up arms and to wives and husbands never again to send their children to war” has lost its appeal, the Asahi said in an editorial.

Mainstream political, business and intellectual leaders are no longer talking about peace as merely an absence of a war involving Japan.

In a Japan Times article, Masamichi Inoki, director of the Research Institute for Peace and Security, blasted Japanese for embracing “a utopian one-nation pacifism . . . a belief that war will ignore Japan if (Japanese) themselves renounce war.” The U.S.-led multinational force in the Middle East, he said, has shown that “military power is indispensable to recover and preserve peace.”

While the United States and 27 other countries have sent troops to the Middle East, Japan has contributed no fighting forces, and the contrast is galling to many leaders.

As Ichiro Ozawa, secretary general of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, put it in a speech: “In other countries at this very moment, at some home, somewhere, a message is being delivered about the death of a husband, a son or a lover. Can we continue to say ‘Japan is special?’ ”

Politicians and businessmen fear that Americans will start criticizing the “shedding (of) the blood of American youth to protect Japan’s oil,” as Yuji Idemitsu, vice president of the Idemitsu Oil Corp., put it.

Whereas the United States depends upon Persian Gulf nations for 30% of its oil imports, Japan’s reliance on Gulf sources is 71%.

No one mentioned it, but while the Gulf War raged, 7,200 Japanese soldiers were building snow sculptures for Sapporo’s famous annual Snow Festival, which was held Feb. 5-11.

“Japanese are beginning to realize that just mimicking the United States, while hiding under the American umbrella, is not enough. We are coming to the realization that we must form our own opinions--that we must become one of the participants. That is a huge change,” Takashi Hosomi, director of the Nissei Research Institute and a former Finance Ministry official, said in an interview.

“Until now, Japan has run away from, or dodged, international (conflicts). But after the U.N. resolutions and the dispatch of troops to the Middle East by (28) countries, Japan realized that it would be forgotten, or isolated, in the international community if it did nothing,” Hiroomi Kurisu, a former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff of Japan’s Self-Defense Forces, said in another interview.

Taboos that had prevented even discussion of sensitive security issues have fallen, one after another.

A nation whose leaders for decades insisted that Japan would make its international contributions in the field of economics has already pledged more aid--$11 billion--to the U.S.-led multinational forces than it spends in an entire year on foreign economic aid.

Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu says that the aid won’t be used for weapons or ammunition and, therefore, can’t be called “military aid.” But, in fact, the commitment marks the first time since World War II that Japan has given material support to a military conflict. Not since 1945 has Japan participated in any overseas fighting.

The decision, Hosomi said, represents “the first time in the postwar period that Japanese have shown any sensitivity to other people dying. It may still leave Japan 100 years behind the United States, but it is huge progress for Japan.”

A taboo on even thinking about sending troops overseas, whatever the purpose, not only has been banished, but Kaifu’s Cabinet already has revised a government ordinance to permit military aircraft to transport refugees in the Middle East.

Although the aircraft, in fact, may never get off the ground, the precedent of making such a decision--still a highly unpopular one--is significant in a country that sanctifies precedents.

A new consensus has emerged that Japan must start dispatching at least civilian volunteers abroad to help out in foreign disasters, refugee assistance, and U.N. noncombat supervisory tasks. Even the Socialists have backed that idea.

By contrast, only three years ago, the first postwar dispatch of a single diplomat to help monitor the Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan stirred a controversy.

Experts such as Nobuo Matsunaga, Japan’s former ambassador to Washington, and Sassa, the former vice minister of defense, believe that public opinion could swing around to support sending troops overseas on a regular basis within a few years, if they are sent as part of a global effort and if they go in noncombat roles.

So far, the big argument for sending noncombat forces has been the perceived desires of Washington for such a move.

“If relations of trust are destroyed, whether the United States would really defend Japan if our country were attacked would be highly doubtful,” Foreign Minister Taro Nakayama told Parliament.

Kurisu, the former chairman of the joint chiefs, said he saw no drive starting within Japan to send troops overseas or play a security role beyond its own borders.

Even now, “neither the government nor the ruling party has the slightest desire to send troops overseas,” Kurisu said. “But they fear that if Japan makes no contribution of personnel, it will become isolated in the world community.”