Recent developments in Japan`s right of collective self-defense and `comfort women` issues have often been attributed to PM Abe`s political agenda, historical revisionism, and Japan`s overall `rightward tilt` in the 2010s. By resuming to Japan`s parliamentary debates (domestic elites) in the 1990s on these two issues, however, this article argues that such perspective is prone to overlook how these issues have been intricately connected to Japan`s `reconstruction` of its national strategic identity in the post-Cold War era. Excavating the link between Japan`s historical revisionism and its efforts to newly consolidate its security posture in the post-Cold War setting, this article finds that the seemingly `revisionist` and `self-contradictory` changes in Japan`s approach to the right of collective self-defense and `comfort women` issues are better understood from the point of Japan`s strategic quest towards security. The central arguments of this paper are: 1) Japan`s domestic debates on the right of collective self-defense and apology diplomacy in the 1990s symbolize Japan`s quest for new strategic identity in the post-Cold War setting; 2) specifically, the `idea` of transition from US-USSR bipolarity to the `UN-centered` world order played a critical role in bringing about Japan`s efforts to renew its postwar pacifist identity and apology diplomacy in the early 1990s; 3) yet, such backbone of the post-Cold War identity was watered down as US-centered security order regained prominence in the late 1990s, attenuating the rationale behind Japan`s pacifism and apology diplomacy on the issues of the right of collective self-defense and `comfort women`; 4) overall, Japan`s vacillation between the UN-centered security posture and the reliance on the US-Japan alliance determined the changes in Japan`s approach to the two contentious issues.