One year ago this month, an advance team from Japan's Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF) arrived in Iraq on a mission -- so the Japanese public was told -- to help rebuild the wartorn country. The rest of the main contingent of 600 troops soon followed.
Then, on Dec. 9, 2004, amid simmering debate over whether the dispatch fell foul of Japan's war-renouncing Constitution -- and after an Asahi Shimbun poll registered over 60 percent opposition to it -- the Cabinet of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi extended the Self-Defense Forces' stay by another 12 months.
Whether the troop deployment to Samawah, in southern Iraq, has been effective or not -- and there are many who doubt it has -- it marks Japan's first military mission to a conflict zone since World War II. The extension of the SDF's deployment also came just the day before an overhaul of the nation's defense policy was announced last month, effectively expanding the global role of Japan's armed forces.