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I was under the impression that Japan didn't have a military, only a domestic defense force. Am I wrong?
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Kobuchi would probably be the better source on this; Prime Minister Koizumi fought fiercely for parliament's approval of a bill that would "allow the dispatch of troops from the Japanese Self Defense Forces" to Iraq for peacekeeping operations, later redefining the bill as one that does not requires the sending of Self-Defense Forces...rather, it's a bill that allows the dispatch of the SDF.
In 1992, Japan passed legislation to allow Japanese troops to join U.N. peacekeeping operations; 1200 troops to Cambodia being the first of these.
To my knowledge, Iraq was the first deployment of troops since World War II, except for U.N.-sanctioned peacekeeping operations.
The Japanese constitution states in Article 9: "The Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes...Land, sea and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized."
Juxta posed to this is fact that Japan warned it would launch a pre-emptive military action against North Korea if it had firm evidence Pyongyang was planning a missile attack.
As for the term 'Miltary', my loose intrepretation may be semantically incorrect, but If they are trained like a soldier, dress like a soldier, and armed like a soldier; they are a soldier, reguardless of deployment location.