Within weeks of 9/11, Japan dispatched ships to the Indian Ocean to provide fuel and other support to the Western forces waging the war in Afghanistan.

It was the first time since World War II that Japan sent forces abroad to support an overseas military conflict, although in a noncombat role. American policymakers hailed Japan as a loyal ally, willing to put "boots on the ground."

Come Nov. 1, however, the Japanese ships will be heading home.

American officials worry that, after taking steps to shed its postwar pacifism, Japan will now shirk its role as an ally in international security.

But these concerns are alarmist. The Japanese government, even its liberal opposition party, has shown a desire and commitment to contribute to global security.

A renewal of the law authorizing the mission in Afghanistan is now increasingly unlikely, since the opposition Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), which opposes the measure, won a shocking victory in last summer's elections for the upper house of parliament. While the ruling conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is still determined to reauthorize the military role, it faces significant public opposition and a tough road in the parliament.

Some American officials and experts have issued bellicose warnings that not renewing the mission would signal a dangerous retreat from Japan's responsibilities in the world and undermine the security alliance. Others accused DPJ leader Ozawa Ichiro of being irresponsible, even "anti-American."

These remarks are clumsy and unfair. The possibility of Japan's return to a lesser security role is real enough, but its mission in Afghanistan is the wrong test of the country's reliability as an ally.

In reality, the maritime mission has become largely symbolic. As for Mr. Ozawa, if Americans would listen carefully to his arguments, they would find that he seeks to expand, not contract, Japan's global security role.

What the US sees as backtracking on global responsibility is actually something else --opposition, shared by Japan's liberal and conservative parties, to the American decision to invade Iraq. Once carefully buried behind the appearance of alliance solidarity, it is now surfacing.

Ozawa and his party have been unusually open in questioning the Iraq war, characterizing it as a war without clear international justification. According to reliable accounts, Japanese Prime Minister Fukuda Kazuo privately shares that view, as do others in the LDP.

US officials critical of the DPJ for avoiding a greater security role for Japan should remember that the party supported the antiterrorism law when it was passed in 2001. But they refused to support its renewal later after the Iraq war began. Over time, senior DPJ members say, the mission's original purpose got muddied with military operations in Iraq. Japanese and American officials deny that any diversion took place, but the Pentagon admits that ships engage in multiple missions and there is no way to segregate how fuel is used.

The new version of the law proposed by the LDP explicitly narrows the role of the Navy to supporting antiterrorist interdiction operations, a backhanded acknowledgment that there was no clear separation from the Iraq war.

Ozawa has long advocated a more visible security role for Japan outside its borders, calling on the government to send forces to aid the Gulf War in 1991 and pushing through legislation allowing Japanese participation in UN peacekeeping operations.

Japanese peacekeepers, however, are restricted to noncombat missions. Despite inching toward a larger security role, the government stands by an interpretation of Japan's American-authored antiwar clause in its Constitution that bars the use of force for anything other than to respond to an attack on themselves. But Ozawa has long contended that the constitutional bar should not extend to UN activities.

This month, Ozawa proposed that instead of the maritime force, Japan should send peacekeepers to Afghanistan under the auspices of the UN-authorized international security forces, and to Sudan as well.

Ironically, the ruling conservatives reject that as unconstitutional, arguing it would be an act of collective defense rather than self-defense.

"If Japan is to really be an ally of the US ..." Ozawa wrote, "it should hold its head up high and strive to give proper advice to the US." And in order to do that," he continued, "Japan had to be willing to put itself more on the line by sharing responsibility for peacekeeping, not just sending a few boats out of harm's way."

These are ideas that should be embraced, rather than denounced, by American officials.

Reprinted by permission by the Christian Science Monitor.

Japan's ruling party suffered a historic defeat Sunday. For the first time since the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) was formed in 1955, an opposition party has become the largest party in the upper house.

The powerful message delivered by Japanese voters has significant implications not only for Japan but also for the rest of the world, not least for its close ally, the United States.

The election result revives momentum in Japan toward creation of a viable two-party system, potentially ending the conservative postwar monopoly on power. Japanese voters expressed deep anxiety about the impact of economic change upon their treasured social order. They embraced the campaign of the Democratic Party (the main opposition) against growing income inequality and the failure of the state to take care of an aging population.

Equally important, the vote was a humiliating defeat for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's agenda of giving priority to revising Japan's antiwar Constitution and allowing its military to take on a global role in support of the US. Democratic Party leader Ichiro Ozawa effectively portrayed Mr. Abe as a man out of touch with the concerns of ordinary Japanese. But he also articulated an alternative vision of Japan's international role, calling for closer ties to its Asian neighbors and sending troops overseas only under the auspices of United Nations peacekeeping missions.

Since 9/11, Japan has been among the most loyal, if not unquestioning, of US allies. It sent troops to Iraq, provided logistical support to the war in Afghanistan, and outdid the US in putting pressure on North Korea. Most recently, Abe echoed the rhetoric of the Bush administration, calling for formation of a "values-based" alliance of democracies along with India and Australia, implicitly aimed at containing a rising China. The election results will certainly slow, if not reverse, this tight synchronization.

For the business community, the vote will raise concerns that needed economic policy actions such as fiscal reforms will get stalled in a gridlocked parliament. The vote reminds politicians that the economic recovery has left an awful lot of Japanese behind, with real wages falling, youth unemployment high, and the elderly drawing down their savings to survive. Abe's feel-good rhetoric and focus on security just angered those Japanese.

There remains strong support for gradual change. Most Japanese want the country to take on a more "normal" security role, but one that will stop far short of overdrawn fears of a remilitarized Japan. And many Japanese, particularly in the younger generation, back economic reform, though not at the expense of social stability.

The most intriguing question is the future of Japan's democracy. Abe is resisting calls for his resignation, attributing the vote to a series of scandals in his Cabinet and most of all to the revelation that the government's national pension system had lost the records of some 50 million people. The election result was bad luck, Abe claimed, not a repudiation of his administration's overall policies -- a view shared by Washington policymakers.

Exit polls do confirm that voters were strongly motivated by these issues. But they also express little faith in the personal leadership of Abe, who tried to cover up the pension debacle. He suffered from an unfavorable comparison to his predecessor, Junichiro Koizumi, one of Japan's most popular postwar leaders.

But the election suggests that Mr. Koizumi's personal charisma only temporarily reversed a longer trend of drift away from the ruling conservatives, particularly by unaffiliated swing voters in Japan's cities and suburbs. Mr. Ozawa, one of Japan's most brilliant politicians, managed to both regain those voters and steal away traditional conservative backers in rural areas among farmers and pensioners worried about their future.

Ozawa, whom I have known for more than two decades, is a man of uncommon political vision. He is a former LDP stalwart who has relentlessly pursued the goal of creating a clearly defined two-party system that can create real competition. He was the architect of a split in the LDP that briefly brought the opposition to power in the early 1990s.

Over dinner last fall, Ozawa laid out to me what seemed then like an incredibly audacious plan to regain power. First to win a series of local elections, leading up to a defeat of the LDP in the upper house election, forcing in turn the dissolution of the lower house and new elections. He clearly hopes to split the LDP again and pry away its coalition partner, the New Komeito Party, as part of his strategy of realignment.

The Democratic Party has yet to demonstrate its own ability to rule, but it would be unwise to underestimate Ozawa. And it would be foolish to dismiss the desire for change delivered by Japanese voters on Sunday.

Reprinted with permission by the Christian Science Monitor.