Accordingly, during the development of the Japan Constitution in 1946, Article 9 was added stating "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.

"[citation needed] "In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained.

It is believed that the Special Diet Session leader Hitoshi Ashida added the clause "In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph" in the middle of Article 9.

[citation needed] Then Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida accepted this wording and was able to convince the US to allow Japan to operate "self defense" forces.

Only after the outbreak of the Korean War did MacArthur authorise Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida to establish a 75,000 strong National Police Reserve.

[1] That year the actual strength of the Ground, Maritime and Air Self-Defence Forces reached 146,285, armed mainly with U.S. World War II vintage equipment.

Zbigniew Brzezinski observed in 1972 that it seemed optimized to fight "a Soviet invasion conducted on American patterns of a quarter of a century ago.

On March 27, 2004, the Japan Defense Agency activated the Special Operations Group with the mandate under the JGSDF as its Counter-terrorist unit.

The marines of the Amphibious Rapid Deployment Brigade are trained to counter invaders from occupying Japanese islands along the edge of the East China Sea.

[14] British troops of the Honourable Artillery Company (HAC) exercised together for the first time with Japanese GSDF soldiers in Oyama, Shizuoka prefecture on 2 October 2018.

Speaking about tensions regarding North Korea, Lieutenant General Patrick Sanders said that Japan "won't have to fight alone.

JGSDF officers monitored the cease-fire between Israel and Egypt at the Multinational Force and Observers command in the Sinai peninsula from 19 April until 30 November 2019.

[18] From September to the end of November 2021, the GSDF conducted nationwide drills with all units including 100,000 personnel, 20,000 vehicles, 120 aircraft and the JMSDF and JASDF as well as a U.S. Army landing ship.

Like the maritime and air forces, the JGSDF ran a youth cadet program offering technical training to lower-secondary school graduates below military age in return for a promise of enlistment.