Sixty years ago on Nov. 12, 1948, the International Military Tribunal for the Far East (IMT) handed down its verdict branding Japan an aggressor nation and leading to the execution of six military leaders and one politician for instigating the war. As if to substantiate the validity of this verdict, Japan transformed itself into a demilitarized nation with a "peace constitution" denouncing military actions.
Triggered by the Korean War, however, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, ordered the government of Japan to start rearming. This marked the beginning of the process of building up moderate armed forces in the name of the Self-Defense Forces, which strove to discard the ferocious image of the former Imperial armed forces. Yet, a series of incidents recently have given rise to suspicions that the SDF may be reverting to old ways of thinking prevalent in the pre-World War II military.
For one thing, a noncommissioned officer who had sought to resign from the special forces training for the Maritime Self-Defense Force was placed in a martial-art fighting exercise with 15 of his colleagues and died 16 days later as a result of the beatings.