In my opinion, more female soldiers or command roles are needed for the Self-

Defense Forces of Japan. From international point of view, the proportion of women in the
Japanese defense forces is much lower than that of the Western countries; it is about one
third of the Western countries and only 5 % of Japanese defense forces. In addition, a lot of
women in the defense forces have formal roles like office tasks and few take commander
roles. There are not laws or codified rules to restrict female advance in the military fields, but
it is virtually limited.
Why is it necessary to increase the number of women in the military? Some conservative
people are against the increase. They often argue that female physical strength and mental
aptitude are less than men, and that soldiers have been male job. First, the idea that
traditionally men have been fighters is just stereotype; for example, in the Red army, women
also had taken the combat roles. In addition, contemporary warfare is digital, and future war
is even more. That means physical strength and other individual factors are not required any
longer to be a soldier. Why do people wearing powered suits and robot controllers who is in
safe place and far from the battle field need to be macho men? Because of such rapid
mechanizing era as this, military can increase women as a soldier.
Contemporary societies, of course including Japan, are facing a lot of national defense
problems such as the fight against terrorism, rapid development of robot weapons, political
conflicts with nearby countries and cyber-terrorism. People alive today will face the situation
in which they need to consider, decide, and form their countries defense policies; The
collective right to self-defense, whether treating the Self-Defense Forces of Japan as the
regular army or not, legislation of national and international laws regarding robot weapons
for example. Not recruiting women in the military services is simply same as excluding women
from the decision-making sphere regarding these defense policies. However, achieving
gender equality in the military institution promote interests of women in the defense policy.
In the next paragraph, I consider the matter from a viewpoint of latest technologies.

There is the question that the necessity of real human beings in the military
institution will disappear with the development in the robot weapons or robot army. To think
about this question, it is necessary to rethink what the warfare is. The purpose of warfare is
to attack enemy, make damage to opponent groups people, properties, and so on, and after
that to carry ones point. By thinking simply, the time war end is when the cost to accept the
other groups arguments exceeds the cost to continue war. If so, future robot war will not be
carried out only by robots. To bring the war to a decisive end, controllers of robot army will
prefer to attack human beings to opponents robots. Social demand for some kind of real
human soldiers in the front line, even if not combat soldiers like heavy infantries in the Roman
era and if not as many people as in the war in the modern times, will continue to exist. Social
demand for intelligent command roles to use robot and information technology effectively
will certainly continue to expand; adopting intelligent people regardless of their sex is
important.

Contemporary Japanese society is gender-mixed in a wide variety of fields

including education, workplace and so on. Young generations today were brought up in
gender-mixed environment, and the most of them take the condition of mixed-gender for
granted. The number of female executives will increase more and more. Women have made
great advances in the political field, too. The defense forces are obviously as important as
economics, politics, and other social areas. if so, why not in the defense forces? The actions
to increase women in the military make it look more normal for civilians, and help gender
equality advance.

Recruiting female soldiers and assigning the commander posts to women in the
military is becoming international main stream. There are countries which do not impose any
kind of restrictions, in which women can access to any positions in the military institute; those
countries are Norway, Spain, Finland, Sweden, and so on. NATO set IMS GENAD, The IMS
Office of the Gender Advisor, to promote gender equality in the military. The promotion of
gender equality in the military in this case means that more inclusion of women and more
access for women to any positions. Japan has no specific reason to go against this global
trend.

My argument is that the present Japanese circumstance in which while people are
claiming the gender equality and female advance in education and workforces, they are
ignoring the distorted gender ratio in the national defense organization is unusual, and
overlooking decisions of such organization having violence are been made only by male is
big social problem of Japan. It is not that I want to argue that it is necessary for Japanese
government to make the draft system for both men and women like Israel. In the present
Japanese society, concrete things such as increasing the defense budget, buying anti-missile
weapons, and making nuclear weapons are always discussed. However, who ultimately make
decisions is not well discussed although most of them are male in the male-oriented
community; the commanders of the Self-Defense Forces of Japan have strong authority over
such decisions like bureaucrats. My purpose is the problem institution for the gender ratio of
the Self-Defense Forces of Japan and negative effects of the male-oriented community on
policy making.

References

Thompson, Mark. (2015). Sending Women to War (pp. 52-55). New York: Time.
Mariner, Rosemary Bryant. (2015). OPINOION (pp 26-27). London: New Scientist.
Radoi, Cristina. (2011). WOMENS CONDITION IN MILITARY INSTITUTIONS (pp
258-265). Braov, Romania: Proceeding of the Scientific Conference AFASES
NOERT ATLANTIC TREATY ORGANIZATION. (n.d.). Gender perspectives in NATO
Armed Forces. Retrieved December 13, 2017, from
https://www.nato.int/cps/ua/natohq/topics_101372.htm
MINISTERY OF DEFENSE []. (2017). Boueishou ni okeru Joseishokuin ni
kansuru Toukei Siryou [. Statistical
data on female staff at Ministry of Defense]. Retrieved December 13, 2017, from
http://www.mod.go.jp/j/approach/hyouka/tokei/women.html