Toothless tiger: Japan Self-Defence Forces

Asia military analyst Franz Stefan Gady asks just how fighting fit are Japan's so-called Self-Defence Forces?

Japan's relationship with its armed forces was once a defining characteristic of the nation. Indeed, "Fukoku kyohei [Enrich the state, strengthen the military]" was the battle cry of the reformers who founded modern Japan during the so-called Meiji Restoration beginning in the 1860s.
In the first decades of the 20th Century, Japan, rather than a state with a military, the island nation slowly transformed into a military with a state - "one hundred million hearts beating as one", as a wartime propaganda slogan boasted.
That all changed after the World War Two.

From offence to defence

The country's complete defeat, not to forget the deaths of 2.7 million Japanese men and women, ended Japan's love affair with its military.
A new constitution, written by the victorious occupying Americans, outlawed the creation of any regular armed forces. Japan was to be a "heiwakokka [peace nation]".
However, after the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, the United States, fearing Communist expansion in Asia, pushed Tokyo to rearm.
To fight off "Red China", the US established the Japan Self-Defence Forces, a military that to this day has not fired a single shot in anger.
Unable to prove their worth in battle and confronted by an almost cult-like anti-militarism, throughout the Cold War, the JSDF suffered from public ridicule and disdain.