Unraveling Japan’s aircraft carrier puzzle: Leveraging carriers’ symbolic value

Japan’s decision to convert two helicopter-carrying ships into fixed-wing aircraft carriers has generated criticism on two fronts. Military analysts question the military sense of carriers in the age of long-range precision missiles, while other domestic critics decry the move as a flagrant breach of Japan’s constitutional constraints on possessing senryoku (war potential) and one likely to provoke Japan’s neighbors, most notably China. Against this backdrop of criticism, why did the administration of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe take Japan back into the difficult business of carriers? This article argues that contrary to stated criticism, the carrier conversion program does provide Tokyo with tangible military benefits but these on their own are insufficient to explain the decision. Instead, we show the move is motivated in part by the desire to leverage carriers’ symbolic value for political ends.