Japan Defense Academy Recruitment Jumps as China Tensions Rise

By Isabel Reynolds May 14, 2014



National Defense Academy (NDA) cadets stand at attention in the NDA campus grounds in Yokosuka, Japan. Photographer: Yuriko Nakao/Bloomberg

A 6:00 a.m. bugle call summons 22-year-old student Mutsumi Iida to begin a day organized by the minute between study, sports and training until lights out at 10:30 p.m.

She picked the National Defense Academy over the freedom of an ordinary university as the best route to her dream of becoming an officer in Japan’s Marine Self-Defense Forces. The largest number of young people in 26 years followed in Iida’s footsteps to the college this year, as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pushes a more active defense posture. Abe today will announce plans to reinterpret Japan’s pacifist constitution to expand the role of the military.

“I want to work on a warship,” she said in an interview in a classroom on the 160-acre seaside campus at Yokosuka, 70 kilometers (43 miles) south of Tokyo. “I want to be at the forefront of national defense. Japan is an island nation, so I think this is the way to get most deeply involved.”

Hemmed in by the country’s charter and lingering resentment over World War II, Japan’s Self-Defense Forces have not traditionally been a route to the top echelons of business or government. Admiration for the defense forces’ role in disaster relief, particularly after the 2011 tsunami, and a deepening territorial dispute with China has fueled national pride and increased interest in the academy even as recruits face an unaccustomed level of danger.

Soldiers Shunned
“In the U.S. and Europe, members of the military are still ordinary members of society,” said Ryosei Kokubun, a civilian China scholar who became president of the academy in 2012. “In Japan, they were not treated as such for many years.”

Kokubun said military uniforms are such a rare sight on Japan’s streets that students often change into civilian dress when they leave campus. He had a planned external lecture canceled when the organizers learned he was working at the academy.

That prejudice is fading, he said. The SDF boasted a more than 90 percent approval rating in a government poll in 2012, compared with 67.5 percent in 1991. The percentage of those seeking to join the armed forces “for the sake of the country” was about 30 percent in 2012, compared with 12 percent nine-years earlier, making it the primary reason given.

Bumper Crop
This year the academy’s dormitories are crowded -- 571 people took up spots, the most since 1978. The numbers of young people taking the entrance exam, which only 1-in-10 pass, have risen for two years, even with the youth population shriveling due to one of the world’s lowest birth rates.

Alongside the standard academic curriculum and an extra dose of security studies, students learn skills like how to dismantle and re-assemble a gun, often marching in formation to class, briefcases in hand. Meals take place in a vast mess hall seating 2,000 and when lectures are over, cadets attend sports clubs, including martial arts such as kendo, judo and sumo.

“I think you get a better education there than at an ordinary university,” said Rear Admiral Umio Otsuka, who graduated in 1983. “You have no free time, so you can’t slack off.”

Japan’s SDF have their roots in the Imperial Army that was disbanded after the country’s 1945 surrender. The constitution imposed by the U.S. after the conflict barred Japan from waging war, limiting the military to a purely defensive role. The postwar forces have never fired a shot in battle.

Million-Man Army
Japan’s forces number about 225,000, a fraction of neighboring North Korea’s more than 1 million-man army and about a 10th that of China. While there is no plan to increase troop numbers, Abe is seeking a more proactive stance amid concerns over North Korea’s nuclear capability and China’s military ambitions.

Abe today will announce details of his plan to allow Japan to come to the aid of allies through a reinterpretation of the constitution. The move is favored by the U.S., which maintains 38,000 troops in the country, and could also pave the way for Japan to take a broader role in international peacekeeping. Abe passed a second annual increase in defense spending and has loosened restrictions on arms exports as part of his security push.

The drive comes after China more than doubled military spending since 2006 as it seeks to build a blue-water navy capable of operating far from its ports. Chinese and Japanese ships regularly tail one another around disputed islands in the East China Sea.

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