Kōmeitō’s security ideals and collective self-defense: betwixt pacifism and compromises

Abstract

After much deliberation, Kōmeitō, the junior partner in the second Abe Cabinet, supported the Cabinet Decision on the reinterpretation of the Japanese Constitution, which allowed for a limited version of collective self-defense. Since an expansion of the boundaries of Japanese security policy is not easily aligned with Kōmeitō’s pacifist ideals, the objective of this paper is to identify the rhetorical strategies employed by Kōmeitō in the process towards the Cabinet Decision. Through a reading of newspaper articles over a one and a half year-period, I find eight rhetorical “commonplaces”—commonsensical arguments—that the Kōmeitō leadership activated in their attempt to convince the public that Kōmeitō’s policy positions and political strategies were reasonable and to persuade the Liberal Democratic Party to rethink its position. An important finding is that most of the commonplaces Kōmeitō employed were about the form of the policy process rather than the content of the specific policies agreed upon.