The Establishment Of Japan’s Post War Civil-military Relations Featuring Civilian Control(1945-1954)

From the surrender in 1945 to the establishment of Japanese Self-Defense Forces and Defense Ministry in 1954,it took ten years for Japan to rise from a complete disarmament to the rebuilding of military forces.During this process,a unique civil-military relations featuring civilian control was developed,and the development of Japanese military forces was put under the direct influence of this unique relations.In order to prevent occupation of the power center by the military during the WWII from happening again,civil-military relations featuring civilian control was modeled after but not a complete copy of the Western civil-military relations.National interests,political systems and cultural traditions were all taken into consideration during the rearmament process,so that the civil-military relations of Japan are different from the Western one.The basic elements of civilian control were guaranteed,while the priority of civilian officials especially those in the Defense Ministry over the military officers was reinforced.The research target of this thesis is to figure out how Japan under the U.S.guidance has developed its own unique civil-military relations that is different from Western traditional ones and what role the domestic politics in Japan played in this process.This thesis tries to answer these questions through analyzing the historical process of the establishment of Japanese civil-military relations.As a very important part of political and international relations studies,the research on civil-military relations is essential to the understanding of interaction between the military and politics.The establishment of Japan’s civil-military relations after WWII was studied so that not only is the existing civil-military relations theories enriched but also the track and process of Japan’s rearmament was closely studied.At the macro level,the changes happened in international systems and regional security are analyzed.At the medium level,different interests,considerations and proposals of the civilian official group,the military group and the American side in the transformation of Japanese political system and the process of Japan’s rearmament are studied.At the micro level,the cognation and personal preference of prominent political figures in Japan with the example of Shigeru Yoshida and senior civilian officials in former Ministry of Internal Affairs are studied.Their cognition and personal preference had a great influence on the establishment of post war civil-military relations in Japan.The civil-military relations featuring “civilian control” in Japan per se is also analyzed.Its operational process and structure are closely examined from different levels of the National Diet,the Cabinet,the Defense Ministry,Self-Defense Forces and so on.Different elements and their interplay affecting the establishment of civil-military relations in Japan are studied comprehensively so that the relations featuring civilian control in Japan,its characteristics and inner mechanism can be better understood in accordance with the historical facts.The innovation of this thesis lies in:(1)unique civil-military relations in Japan featuring civilian control has been analyzed with civil-military relations theories;(2)A systematic case study was carried out on the history of rearmament in Japan and its impications for its postwar civil-military relations;(3)the effects and influence of civilian and military official groups on the establishment of civil-military relations in Japan after WWII have been studied in depth.Based on these findings,further studies on Japan’s security strategy choice and the evolvement of civil-military relations in Japan can be carried out more deeply in the future.