Adam P. Liff Japan’s Defense Policy: Abe the Evolutionary Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s historic April visit to Washington capped the most significant two-year period in Japan’s defense reform in decades. Since his unlikely return as prime minister in December 2012, Abe has declared that “Japan is back,” expressed his desire for it to be a “first-tier” power, and sketched out an ambitious vision for a U.S.–Japan “Alliance of Hope.” 1 With the April announcement of new Guidelines for U.S.–Japan Defense Cooperation and two major security bills currently under debate in Japan’s Diet, 2015 is already a historic year for Japanese defense policy and the U.S.–Japan alliance. 2 To some, bold defense reforms under Abe make him Japan’s most transformative leader since post-WWII Occupation-era Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida. 3 No doubt, the Abe administration’s accomplishments are many. Since December 2013, Japan has established a National Security Council and released its first-ever National Security Strategy, championing a new doctrine of “Proactive Contributions to Peace”; updated the seminal 2010 National Defense Program Guidelines; passed a controversial secrets protection law; and significantly revised a decades-old ban on arms exports. Last July, Abe’s Cabinet “reinterpreted” Article 9 of Japan’s Constitution to partially lift a longstanding, self-imposed prohibition on exercising the U.N.-sanctioned right to collective self-defense. These reforms have culminated in April’s Guidelines— the first update since 1997—and the now-pending slate of security legislation. Adam P. Liff is Assistant Professor at Indiana University’s School of Global and International Studies (SGIS), Postdoctoral Fellow in the Princeton-Harvard China and the World Program, and Associate-in-Research at Harvard University’s Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies and Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies. He can be reached at aliff@indiana.edu. Follow him @AdamPLiff. For helpful feedback on earlier drafts, the author thanks Zack Cooper, Brad Glosserman, James Mayger, Sheila Smith, and Yuki Tatsumi. Copyright # 2015 The Elliott School of International Affairs The Washington Quarterly • 38:2 pp. 79–99 http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0163660X.2015.1064711 THE WASHINGTON QUARTERLY & SUMMER 2015 79