Elsevier

Space Policy

Volume 29, Issue 2, May 2013, Pages 135-143
Space Policy

A normal space power? Understanding ‘security’ in Japan's space policy discourse

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.spacepol.2013.03.001Get rights and content

Abstract

With the enactment of its ‘Basic Space Law’ in 2008, a significant shift occurred in Japan's space policy away from a narrowly circumscribed interpretation of the concept of space for ‘peaceful purposes’ to a broad understanding of space for ‘security’. Viewed in a global context, Japanese space policy appears symptomatic of a broadened and more malleable understanding of space for security purposes, as already advocated by several other leading spacefaring powers, and proponents of this understanding of space for security argue that this is consistent with international standards and the expectations of a ‘normal’ space power. By attempting to redefine understandings of ‘peace’ and ‘security’, however, the Basic Space Law and subsequent direction of Japanese space policy raise complex and ongoing issues over the interpretation of Japan's ‘Peace Constitution’. This article reviews policy and academic discussions of the recent evolution of Japanese space policy in this respect, arguing that greater emphasis on ‘security’ – understood in a deliberately broad sense in policy terms – has been key to articulating and justifying the reformulation and redirection of Japanese space policy, but that this also brings with it room for ambiguity over the exact nature of Japan's space ambitions at both national and regional levels.

Introduction

While Japan can be credited with ‘more than five decades of achievements in human spaceflight’, and ‘produces sophisticated launchers, satellites, and robotic devices to equal the world's best’,1 domestic commentators have until recently often lamented a relative lack of political momentum in developing Japan's space capabilities.2 However, following what some have described as a decade of ‘low activity’ in relation to its space programme lasting from the mid-1990s until 2005,3 the recent evolution of Japanese space policy suggests a comparatively more coordinated effort to capitalize on its potential as a global spacefaring power. The announcement of ambitious plans for a manned space programme by 2025 (as set out by JAXA, the Japanese Space Agency, in 2005), investment in and development of advanced technologies such as the Quasi-Zenith Satellite system (QZSS) for global positioning, and the recent establishment of the Japanese Strategic Headquarters for Space Development might all be seen to be indicative of a renewed degree of vigour in this respect.

At a policy level, the broader orientation towards Japan's use and development of outer space (termed here as Japan's space policy posture) has been explicitly outlined with the ‘Basic Space Law’ of 2008 and subsequently fleshed out with the ‘Basic Plan for Space Policy’ in 2009. Both seek to impart a new direction for Japanese space policy and are reflective of a greater degree of impetus in respect of Japan's space ambitions. However, both have also generated considerable debate within and beyond Japan with particular regard to the potential military dimensions of Japan's current and future use and development of outer space.

In large part, it is argued here, these debates stem from, and hinge upon, an emphasis on ‘security’ within both the Basic Space Law and Basic Plan for Space Policy, a dimension of Japan's space policy that has yet to be fully examined. Most academic commentators and policy analysts have focused on trying to address the questions of ‘why?’ and ‘why now?’ in relation to the Basic Law and Basic Plan: that is, why has Japan chosen to alter the direction of its space policy, and why at this point in its historical development? Reviewing the existing literature, this article outlines the different emphases identified by accounts seeking to explain the emergence of the Basic Space Law, with a particular focus on the extent to which such explanatory accounts emphasize militarization as an explanatory factor. Rather than seeking to add to these debates on ‘why?’ and ‘why now?’ directly, the article instead shifts its focus to the question of how Japan's new space policy is constructed and understood in policy terms. More specifically, the article focuses on the understanding of security that is found within Japan's recent space policy discourse, concentrating in particular on the Basic Space Law and Basic Plan for Space Policy. This points to a ‘broadened’ conception of space security, one that attempts to encompass a multitude of ‘security’ dimensions that range from human security to environmental issues, crisis management and disaster response as well as potential military applications. In this sense the article argues that the understanding of security employed within Japanese space policy falls short of the clear pathway to overt militarization recently suggested by some commentators; but, equally, that this understanding of security moves Japanese space policy closer to an assumed ‘international standard’, and might be viewed as part of a larger effort to position Japan as a ‘normal’ global space power, inclusive of allowance for certain military application.

In this sense, Japan's contemporary space policy can be argued to be an important subset of broader debates on Japan's ‘normalization’.4 What the analysis offered below suggests, however, is that such arguments for normalization are far from straightforward (in this area of policy at least). Proponents of Japan's new space policy posture seek to navigate a complex course between the norms embodied in Japan's constitutional provisions, its previous space policy posture, standards of international law and the activities of other space powers. The concluding section of the article reflects on the potential ambiguities that this process of navigation might create with respect to Japan's evolving space posture and its development as a regional and global space power. While the introduction of a broad security rationale may, as its proponents argue, promise a less restrictive policy-making paradigm, it also introduces the risk that other regional powers (and external academic observers) may concentrate primarily on the traditional connotations of national (military) security. Thus, while the understanding of security employed within current Japanese space policy discourse may be intended to assuage concerns about militarization, it nonetheless retains the potential to have the opposite effect.

Section snippets

A new departure? Japan's ‘Basic Space Law’

Although both arguably attracted relatively little public discussion or media attention, Japan's ‘Basic Space Law’ and ‘Basic Plan for Space Policy’ have been the subject of a small but often extensively detailed range of commentaries on their context, significance and implications.5

Explaining Japan's space policy posture

The survey of assessments of the Basic Space Law above attests to the presence of a broad consensus over its importance in the context of Japan's evolution as a space power, but also to notable divergences over its implications, particularly with regard to question of whether Japan is likely to adopt (or indeed has already adopted) a more militarized approach to outer space. In part the divergences in these assessments can be related and attributed to different explanatory accounts of the

Understanding Japan's space policy posture: from ‘peaceful purposes’ to ‘security’

Each of the accounts reviewed above marshals its own evidence-base to provide different – and often competing – causal explanations of the evolution of Japan's space policy posture: an emphasis on exogenous ‘shocks’ and the external strategic environment; a ‘market-to-military’ thesis; a distinctive domestic ‘policy logic’. Still others have, somewhat more speculatively, suggested that recent developments in Japan's space policy posture can be explained by a (largely unspoken) concern with

Conclusion

From a comparative perspective, the development of Japan's space policy can be argued to be largely consistent with the global context of space policy more generally. The Space Security Index report Space Security 2009, for example, referred specifically to the development of Japanese space policy with the Basic Law of 2008 but placed it within a broader comparative context wherein ‘National space policies consistently emphasize international cooperation and the peaceful uses of outer space’

Acknowledgments

The author wishes to acknowledge the support of the Japan Foundation (London Office) ‘Study Support Programme’ for funding support for travel to Japan in December 2010 for research and conference presentation purposes; and participants at the ‘Peace as a Global Language’ conference at the International Christian University, Mitaka, Tokyo, December 2010 and the Centre for East Studies workshop on ‘East Asian Space Policy in a Global Context’, University of Bristol, November 2012, for their

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