Issue:
September 2023
As security threats rise, Japan’s armed forces wrestle with a chronic shortage of recruits and low morale
It has long been a goal of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party [LDP] to upgrade the status of Japan's Self-Defense Forces (SDF) to that of a regular military. The main hurdle is article 9 of the post-war constitution, which prohibits Japan from waging war or keeping a standing army. As a compromise, the SDF were created for the express purpose of defending the archipelago. But under the leadership of the late Shinzo Abe during his second term as prime minister, Japan passed laws that effectively allowed the SDF to join in collective defense activities with other countries, in particular the U.S. The cabinet of the current prime minister, Fumio Kishida, aims to increase the defense budget to 2% of GDP without having it discussed in the Diet.
Lost amid the attendant controversy is the SDF itself, or more specifically the people who serve in it. If the LDP really wants to cultivate the kind of military that other countries have, they need to maintain a certain level of manpower, and according to various media outlets, as the government has become more hawkish about security and eager to please the U.S., SDF ranks have been shrinking. An August 16 report by the Japan Communist Party [JCP] stated that last year the number of applications fell below 80,000 for the first time in 10 years. The most obvious conclusion is that the young people who would be expected to volunteer for the SDF are afraid of the increased possibility of being sent to battle, what with the heated rhetoric about a conflict between the U.S. and China over Taiwan. And while this fear is certainly a factor – the SDF's own promotional magazine, Mamor, last year published a survey that found 71.8% of young people would not fight to defend Japan if invaded – the SDF's recruitment difficulties are more complicated, involving systemic problems that have yet to be addressed.
One issue appears to be the SDF's emphasis on what is known as economic conscription, a policy of targeting young people from low-income backgrounds for recruitment activities. The U.S. all-volunteer military has made economic conscription the cornerstone of its recruitment push ever since the military draft was abolished in the 1970s. Recruiters visit high schools in poorer regions of the country and offer students the chance for personal advancement through free university educations as well as skills training in return for joining the military. Japan's use of this tool is more elaborate, according to Yujin Fuse, a journalist who covers defense matters in Japan. In a recent interview for the podcast Dialogue for the People, Fuse admits that ever since Kishida announced a higher profile for the SDF it has become more obvious that personnel numbers within the organization are far below those necessary for any kind of effective action should Japan be attacked, much less for any kind of large-scale effort that would involve Chinese aggression.
According to Fuse's research, throughout the world recruits who join the military for economic reasons rarely express enthusiasm for defending their country, and yet it is these people who are typically sent to the front lines when their country is at war. When Fuse studied the situation in Japan, he found that economic conscription was not initially a favored recruitment tool, but has become more prevalent in recent decades. Statistically, the more difficult the economic situation of a potential recruit, the higher the likelihood that they will join, and yet recruitment for the SDF has never reached desired targets. Predictably, when the economy is doing poorly, it is easier to recruit. Once the economy picks up, recruitment drops, but the SDF always suffers from a chronic labor shortage. Among the lower ranks, there is always a 20% deficit. The same JCP report said that in 2022 1,068 of 1,747 local governments shared personal information about residents with the SDF for recruitment purposes, perhaps in response to a 2019 quote by Abe, who lamented the fact that more local governments did not share such information.
Fuse also says that Japan's use of promoting the economic benefits of joining up is probably the most transparent in the world. He cites recruitment literature used in Hokkaido that emphasizes "three balanced and nutritious meals a day; free accommodations, clothing, and bedding; and free medical care". In most other countries, a core recruitment strategy is an appeal to patriotism, but in Japan such a strategy seems useless, though appealing to a sense of public service may be effective. The SDF gains more recruits through its work in disaster mitigation than it does through any image of defending the country. As an example, Fuse mentions Rina Gonoi, the former SDF member who is now suing several fellow recruits for sexual assault, as well as the government for allowing it to happen. She has said it was her lifelong dream to join the SDF because of their work in helping people during and following disasters.
As in the U.S., recruiters in Japan form close relationships with high schools, and then become acquainted with teachers who help them target less advantaged students. By the same token, teachers can point out students who want to be civil servants, especially police officers or firefighters. Often such aspirations can be rerouted toward the SDF. Fuse says there is nothing wrong, in principle, with such a system as long as the recruiters are honest with the potential recruits, but many former SDF personnel he has spoken to over the years complained that they had been “fooled” by recruiters into expecting better benefits than those they ended up receiving.
This phenomenon was described in more detail in an article that appeared on the Friday Digital website in July following the June shooting in Gifu of three SDF officers, two of whom died, by a recruit who was still going through the three-month probationary training period. The incident, which occurred at an SDF firing range, has rocked the organization because measures had been enacted to prevent such shootings following a similar incident in the 1980s. The writer of the article, a former SDF member, says that while no official explanation has been given for the recruit's actions, new members often have trouble squaring their ideal of service with reality. For the most part, advancement is determined by tests and time served rather than effort, and once this sinks in, many recruits see themselves trapped, because unlike in a conventional job, they don't have the option of quitting. If a recruit wants to leave the force, they have to first give 30 days’ notice and then seek permission from their superior to leave, which can take up to 30 additional days. The recruit may end up waiting up to two months, during which time they become more desperate.
Such desperation can be deadly. Though the Friday article points out that there is an average of at least one suicide among SDF members every week, the number seems to be dropping. Nevertheless, the suicide rate remains higher than that for any other military in the world. In 2013, the suicide rate (number of suicides per 100,000 samples of a given population) in the SDF was more than 50% higher than it was for U.S. troops, which at the time were still fighting in Afghanistan.
Disillusionment with their lot is even more acute among officers. The Friday article explains how difficult it is for higher-ranking officers to quit, since they are appointed to their positions by the prime minister. In order to leave, an officer must receive permission from the defense minister, which involves a lot of protocols that can take years to clear. Moreover, the officer's superior will catch flak for allowing someone under them to resign, so they will do whatever they can to prevent them from leaving.
Since national service has a different meaning than conventional employment, many people believe it should be difficult to quit once a person has made the commitment, but officers in the SDF may have more reason than recruits to be disappointed with their situation. Last spring, Haruo Tomatsu, a professor at the National Defense Academy, a four-year university that educates and trains volunteers who become officers in all three branches of the SDF, published an open letter describing the lack of morale among students as a result of certain cynical attitudes held by the faculty and administration. In an interview that appeared June 30 on the website Shueisha Online, Tomatsu explained that of the 479 students who graduated from the academy in March, 72 rejected their commissions and quit the SDF. And during the previous year, almost 100 first-year students had dropped out, the highest number ever. Some believe the high turnover was due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which caused some students to question whether they wanted to go into a service in which they could be called to battle. Tomatsu says that isn't the reason, however. The main problem, he said, was the school itself, specifically its instructors.
For one thing, the defense ministry tends to assign less capable SDF officers to “education posts” in the organization, since they are reluctant to dismiss officers accused of harassment, service violations, or just repeated general mistakes. Instead of punishing or discharging these officers, they “demote” them to teaching jobs, including positions at the academy. Very few of these teachers have postgraduate degrees, usually required for university-level teaching positions in Japan, and even fewer have “a passion for teaching,” says Tomatsu. They have little knowledge about the subjects they teach and tend to rely on manuals “that have been around forever”. Even worse, they personalize their curriculum with “cheap conspiracy theories” about national security and invite prominent right-wing pundits as guest lecturers. The pundits then put these lectures on their resumes to bolster their reputations as legitimate academics, even though they are anything but. This questionable practice is not limited to the academy, but is also prevalent at other officer training institutions within the SDF.
Tomatsu says he has complained about this phenomenon for some time, but has always been ignored by his superiors, both at the academy and the defense ministry. During the Covid pandemic, classes were held under normal circumstances and students were assigned to dormitories with eight to a room. Morale dropped sharply. There were five suicide attempts, a number of desertions, and even one case of possible arson. New students were bullied, with some forced into a gambling scheme concocted by upper classmen. No one in the organization took any responsibility for these problems. Tomatsu sent letters to the inspector generals in charge, who returned them without comment. Later, he sent a letter to the minister of defense, who also did not respond.
“I couldn't help but wonder what they were thinking about the education of people who would someday be in charge of national security," Tomatsu said in the interview. That's why he published his opinion, so that the media and general public could read it.
In a discussion of Tomatsu's essay on the current affairs web program, Democracy Times, journalist Shigeru Handa, who has covered the SDF for 30 years, said the poor morale brought about by the toxic environment at the academy and other officer training schools has led not only to “bullying, gambling, and swindling”, but to a general mood of disgust among students, who either quit or accept the protocol and then mimic the bad behavior of their superiors. Handa outlines a number of scams that SDF officers have perpetrated against taxpayers by setting up fake situations, such as boarding houses for recruits, for which they then collect subsidies. Insurance fraud is also a problem.
Major media outlets have covered some of these problems. Gonoi's case has been in the news for more than a year, and led to the formation of a government panel that looked into harassment in the SDF. According to AP, the panel recently reported that it found “widespread coverups and reluctance among supervisors to deal with cases”. It also reported that 60% of the victims in 1,325 cases it studied “never sought help from counselors in the military due to a lack of trust in the system or a fear of retribution”. The panel recommended “fundamental improvements”, but it is too early to say what that would entail.
Although SDF members take an oath to protect Japan with their lives, they may not really understand the risks involved, because recruiters only emphasize the economic advantages. In the past, their mission was limited to defending Japan, but if “national security” entails fighting wars alongside allied countries, there may be considerable anxiety among the ranks. Handa talks about the three periods when turnover in the SDF was the highest: 2003-09, when Japan dispatched the SDF to Iraq for logistical work; 2014-16, right after the security law was changed allowing SDF to fight alongside allies overseas; and 2022-23, after the cabinet authoritized the use of preemptive attacks on designated enemies. “Any time there is an increase in Japan's military posture,” he says, “more people quit." Those who do join the SDF seem to rarely consider the possibility that they will fight in a war, even though the media has been talking about that possibility for years now. Even NHK, during its annual August 15 NHK Special to commemorate Japan's 1945 surrender, premised the program on the idea that more than half of Japan's Generation Z believe Japan will be involved in a war within the next 10 years. The government remains vague about this possibility – it hasn't even explained to its own citizens how Japan could turn into a battleground between China and the U.S. if a war breaks out. If that happens, Japan couldn't possibly prevail.
Philip Brasor is a Tokyo-based writer who covers entertainment, the Japanese media, and money issues. He writes the Japan Media Watch column for the Number 1 Shimbun.
Sources
https://www.nhk.jp/p/special/ts/2NY2QQLPM3/episode/te/Y8453LYL9L/
