Under the circumstances of continued occupation, moreover, the issue of self-defense was hardly a pressing concern—until June 1950, that is, when rearmament was initiated in the wake of the outbreak of war in Korea. Then the conservatives and the Americans alike found their loophole in the murky language of the Ashida amendment, and the opponents of remilitarization rallied around the ideals of disarmed neutrality that they believed to be firmly embedded in their “peace constitution.”
