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he Izumo-class helicopter destroyer than the Japanese government is planning on converting into an aircraft carrier. (website of the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force)

The Japanese government and its ruling party have decided that the Izumo-class helicopter destroyer that’s being converted into an aircraft carrier will be called a “multi-purpose operation destroyer.” Despite the creative nomenclature, however, the ship will remain for all intents and purposes an aircraft carrier.

During a meeting on Dec. 5, members of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and Komeito parties who are revising the National Defense Program Guidelines agreed to call the converted destroyer a “multi-purpose operation destroyer,” Japan’s Asahi Shimbun reported on Dec. 6. The National Defense Program Guidelines outline Japan’s national defense policy, and the revised version will probably be adopted by the Japanese cabinet in the middle of this month. The Japanese government is expected to use this revision of the defense guidelines to officially announce the operation of aircraft carriers.

Initially, the LDP considered using the term “defensive aircraft carrier.” Because of Japan’s principle of “exclusively defense-oriented defense,” which limits military action to the minimum necessary for defending against an attack, the Japanese government was maintaining the position that it would not acquire an attack-oriented aircraft carrier. But Komeito, a junior coalition partner of the LDP, opposed this proposal on the grounds that the phrase “aircraft carrier” should not be used.

In May, the LDP came up with the term “multi-purpose operation mother ship.” But Komeito rejected this idea, too, because the Japanese word for mother ship (bokan) is reminiscent of the word for aircraft carrier (kubo).

“The working group’s shared view was that the vessel would be multi-purpose and capable of different operations while remaining under the scope of a destroyer,” said Itsunori Onodera, a former defense minister who is in charge of the working group revising the defense guidelines.

But simply changing the name is unlikely to assuage concerns that retrofitting a destroyer as an aircraft carrier could render meaningless the principle of “exclusively defense-oriented defense.”

In a related story, the LDP has given up the idea of submitting a constitutional amendment to the Diet this year that would add an explicit reference to the existence of the Japanese Self-Defense Forces. The LDP had been planning to submit the constitutional amendment to the House of Councilors’ constitutional review committee before the year ends, but opposition parties frustrated with the unilateral drive to amend the constitution have blocked that move by boycotting the committee. The submission of the constitutional amendment is likely to be delayed until next year.

By Cho Ki-weon, Tokyo correspondent

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