SAPPORO: Fresh-faced soldiers in crisp camouflage and new black boots eagerly bounded onto towering blocks of hard snow. Armed with shovels and sculpting tools, they were deploying on one of the trademark missions for Japanese troops - carving statues for the annual Sapporo Snow Festival.

Under the gaze of superior officers, a squadron of field artillery specialists chipped away at a Manhattan skyline magically taking shape behind a mammoth bust of New York Yankees slugger Hideki Matsui.

A few strides away, members of the Self- Defence Forces' 11th Division etched a 40-foot-high scene from Peach Boy Railroad, a video game. These were just a few of the dazzling works created by 23,000 troops for the festival's two million visitors.

In a nation with a constitution that renounces war, the sculpture mission reinforces the affable image of what is essentially a pacifist military. But today Japan is in the midst of a historic deployment of roughly 1,000 troops to Iraq, including many of the men who once carved similarly glistening shapes here.

On Sunday, about 80 Japanese troops crossed the border from Kuwait into southern Iraq in a convoy of 25 jeeps, trucks and armoured vehicles flying white-and-red Japanese flags, news services reported. They arrived in the town of Samawah following the earlier arrival of an advance party.

The dispatch of soldiers to Iraq has jarred the national psyche. No Japanese soldier has fallen - or killed an enemy - since the surrender to the United States in 1945.

Pacifism has run deep here since the Imperial Army led 2 million soldiers to their deaths in World War II and the United States dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that led to the end of the conflict. So, today, many Japanese are deeply torn, even tormented, about the military's new post-war role.

There are concerns over whether the Self-Defence Forces are suitable for a place as dangerous as Iraq. The troops, though backed by the world's fourth-largest military budget, are so new to hot spots that those soldiers chosen for Iraq duty required special training on matters as basic as how to handle their guns.

Furthermore, their strict rules of engagement do not allow them to fire unless it is clearly necessary for self-defence. That calculation, many fret, may cause soldiers to pause for a fatal split second.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi has stated that the Japanese troops in Iraq will carry out only such noncombat duties as distributing water and transporting supplies.

"You are not going to Iraq for war, nor to exercise force, nor to be engaged in combat, but instead to help the people of Iraq reconstruct their country," he told troops who were preparing to depart last week.

So far, about 270 troops have been sent to the Persian Gulf region, and another 740 are expected to arrive in the coming weeks, with their mission scheduled to last at least one year. Japan is also deploying C-130 transport planes, armoured vehicles, and two high-tech destroyers to the area.

Koizumi and other supporters of the deployment view the mission as a step on Japan's inevitable path to becoming a "normal nation," capable not only of defending itself but of playing a more active role in global conflicts. Japan, they say, is finally living up to the responsibilities of having the world's second-largest economy, with many envisioning a time when Tokyo stands side by side with Washington - its protector for half a century - sharing the burden of managing global trouble spots.

The Japanese were deeply stung by US criticism following the 1991 Persian Gulf War that Tokyo had effectively purchased the safety of Japanese citizens by dispatching $13 billion instead of troops. Japan slowly began to alter its position, sending members of the Self-Defence Forces on limited engineering and technical missions to Cambodia, East Timor, Africa and the Golan Heights - always as part of UN peacekeeping forces.

Emboldened by Koizumi's success last year in winning approval for the Iraq mission in the legislature, the prime minister's ruling Liberal Democratic Party is moving ahead with plans to revise the constitution, drafted in 1946 by US occupation authorities. In addition to renouncing war, the document states that "land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained."

Lawmakers are pushing for changes that would allow the Self- Defence Forces to be called a military, which the constitution now prohibits, and grant the government far broader authority to dispatch soldiers overseas.

After years of debate, many believe the government has a good chance of winning such changes. Japan is already adding significantly to its military hardware without widespread opposition.

Some even see a rekindling of the old samurai spirit. "Befitting the nation of the way of the samurai, the SDF will accomplish our mission in a disciplined and dignified manner," Col. Koichiro Bansho, who is leading the Iraq mission, told the troops at a ceremony in Hokkaido last week.

Such statements cause discomfort among Japan's Asian neighbours, particularly those who suffered from Imperial Army atrocities during World War II. Koizumi is already under fire in the Koreas and China for his frequent visits to Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine, which honours Japanese who died in military conflicts, including war criminals.

In making the case for the Iraq deployment, Koizumi has taken the argument beyond citing the need to honour the US-Japanese alliance to invoke what he calls Japan's "national interest" in maintaining stability in the Middle East, given the nation's reliance on foreign oil. The quest for natural resources - which Japan largely lacks - was also a leading reason for the nation's military expansion in the early 20th century.

In a scathing editorial last week, North Korea's official news service said: "The aim sought by the troop dispatch is to build a framework for turning Japan into a military giant, militarizing it and securing a justification for overseas aggression."

In Iraq, Japanese scout teams have spent months combing the country, pinpointing the safest place to send troops, officials have said. They settled on Samawah, about 150 miles south of Baghdad, an area Koizumi has described as a "noncombat zone."

But analysts say that most Japanese appear to believe there are no safe places in Iraq and view the untried young troops as venturing into uncharted territory. -Dawn/The LAT-WP News Service (c) The Washington Post.