The Study Of Japan Self-Defense Force’s Emergency Assistance For Overseas Disasters

Since historical and realistic reasons, Japan Self-Defense Force (JSDF) has been a hot point in academic field. However most of researchers just pay attention to JSDF’s overseas military actions, ignore the JSDF’s overseas non-traditional security actions like JSDF’s emergency assistance for overseas disasters. Moreover, most of the researchers only see the actions of JSDF’s emergency assistance for overseas disasters as a part of Japan’s disaster diplomacy policies, which is not delve the background for why the Japanese government made these decisions.In fact, before JSDF joined into the Japan Disaster Relief Team (JDR), the JDR has already been the one of the best rescue team in the world. Why Japanese government asked their military to join the JDR? This thesis begins from this question, so that gets an assumption-there are three factors have influenced JSDF joined into JDR-after reviewing the decision process of Japanese government. Furthermore the three factors are Japan-US relations, breaking the "pacifist constitution" and the comprehensive capacity of JSDF.From the core assumption, this thesis not only analysis the JSDF’s emergency assistance for overseas disasters in different periods for Japan-US relations, but also show that how Japanese government use JSDF’s overseas secure rescue actions to break the "pacifist constitution", and explain why the JSDF’s comprehensive capacity have restricted it’s chose of mission type.Finally, as China has expanded disaster diplomacy, many western countries have stigmatized China’s disaster diplomacy in recent years. Instead of studying western countries’ disaster diplomacy policies, this thesis has analyzed this problem by researching the international relationships between these Western countries. Indeed, this kind of new viewpoint is the realistic meaning for this thesis.