The Struggle to Rearm Japan: Negotiating the Cold War State in US-Japanese Relations

Abstract

The Cold War brought forth an unprecedented level of global interactions, creating relationships that not only brought states together but altered the trajectories of societies. To explore the impact of the Cold War on postwar Japan, this article examines the negotiations between the United States and Japan over Japanese membership in the Mutual Security Program, the United States’ postwar military assistance program. It considers debates over Japanese rearmament and their effect on Japan’s economy and democracy, both within Japan and between Japan and the United States, the negotiations that resulted in Japan’s membership in the program, and Japanese reactions to this membership. It argues that Japanese rearmament both brought the United States and Japan together, and created tensions between them, highlighting the complicated Cold War dynamics between domestic and international politics. Further, it asserts that the Cold War altered the nature of the state by fostering a multilayered relationship between government policy-making, international negotiations, institutional developments, and socio-political mobilizations, creating a new political relationship that it calls the Cold War State.