The Japanese-American defense alliance has been a defining factor in Japan’s foreign and defense policy for more than 70 years. With the enactment of the pacifist constitution in 1947, this new rulebook—and especially its famed Article 9—stripped the country of its sovereign right to wield war as a way of sorting out international conflicts, while it also established a prohibition on maintaining air, navy, or ground forces as part of a national army.
