Peace Constitution: Japanese Seeking Legal Advice at Cal
Legislators May Alter Ban on Military Force
CHARLES BURRESS / SF Chronicle 1sep03
A high-profile delegation from Japan's parliament is coming to Berkeley this week to seek advice on breaking a taboo that could shake the nation to its foundations.
The Japanese Diet members, led by former Foreign Minister Taro Nakayama, will meet a small group of UC Berkeley experts on Tuesday as they begin a North American study of a question that was too sensitive even to discuss for several decades:
Should Japan touch the U.S.-drafted "Peace Constitution" (see info below) that was foisted on the country by Gen. Douglas MacArthur after Japan's unconditional surrender in World War II?
The war-renouncing constitution, with its ban on Japanese military forces, has never been amended since its adoption in 1947.
Changing the constitution "could change Japan's place in the world," said Steven Vogel, a UC Berkeley political scientist responsible for the delegation choosing Cal brains to pick.
The Japanese constitution long occupied a sacrosanct no-comment zone in public debate because of bitter anguish and suffering caused by the war, the nation's focus on economic growth, and the seemingly unresolvable divide within Japan over use of military force and dependence on U.S. protection.
But recently the mood has changed dramatically in the wake of a widening desire to recover national pride and independent foreign policy, coupled with North Korea's nuclear threat and U.S. pressure for a stronger Japanese military role.
At the same time, Japan's image and military policy have been severely strained by diplomatic attempts to reconcile the constitution's absolute ban on military power with its large armed forces, known as the Self-Defense Forces.
Just say "Article 9" in Japan, and everyone recognizes the famous provision of the constitution that says:
"Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.
"In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized."
Yet Japan's army, navy and air forces rank fourth in the world in total spending on military, behind the United States, China and France, according to the CIA World Factbook.
Opinions on whether to replace or revise the nation's legal foundation differ sharply in Japan, with major newspapers taking opposing sides.
"Article 9 and the Self-Defense Forces are contradictory, and are nothing short of humbug in adult society," Jitsuro Terashima, head of the Mitsui Global Strategic Studies Institute, said before the Diet commission charged with examining constitutional revision.
But Tokyo University Professor Kiichi Fujiwara sees revision as a dangerous release of brakes on military power. "The revision will rather unleash our military, or SDF, from previous legal controls," he said in an e-mail.
Vogel, writing in the influential newspaper Asahi Shimbun last month, urged that Article 9 be revised to recognize the Japanese military and the nation's right to engage in collective self-defense and multilateral peacekeeping, while maintaining the commitment to "peaceful diplomacy."
His participation in Japan's growing debate helped draw the Diet delegation's attention to Vogel and his colleagues at Berkeley.
The government has argued that the constitution does not bar self-defense, and Japan's military does not include major offensive weapons such as aircraft carriers or ballistic missiles.
The constitution was further stretched in July when the Japanese parliament approved high-stakes legislation to send peace-keeping troops to Iraq, the first time since World War II that Japanese armed forces have been sanctioned to go to a combat zone. But the later bombing of the U.N. headquarters in Baghdad and looming parliamentary elections in Japan appear to have stalled the actual dispatch of troops on the ground.
The prospect of a looser leash on Japan's military has alarmed many people in China and the two Koreas, where bitter memories of Japanese Imperial Army atrocities and brutal colonialism still linger.
But at the same time, many people inside Japan are still rankled by the accusation that Japan, a staunch U.S. ally, engaged in "checkbook diplomacy" when it contributed $13 billion in the 1991 Gulf War, but no troops.
Another reason for the push is that having a constitution imposed from outside, even though it was embraced by a war-weary society and strengthened civil rights, has come to gall many in Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), Vogel said.
The 11-member delegation of legislators and staff coming to Berkeley is part of the Diet's Research Commission on the Constitution, established in 2000 as the government's main body for addressing the issue.
Vogel contacted the commission after its thick, midway report was issued in November and a colleague in Tokyo alerted him that "momentous things are happening in Japan," he said.
"It's one of those things that on the one hand are earth-shattering," he said of the report's predominant sentiment toward revision, "but on the other, it's a thousand pages of turgid prose."
The commission is expected to finish its task by 2005, and Vogel said it's "highly likely" that it will recommend a new constitution. But it must be approved also in a public referendum, a tougher call, he said.
Opinion polls show that most Japanese favor revision, but only a minority want to change Article 9. Article 9 is the main issue under dispute, but other elements too are under review, including emergency powers and federal-versus- local government distribution of power.
On Tuesday, the Diet delegation will meet with Vogel, T.J. Pempel, director of the Institute of East Asian Studies, and three law school experts on U.S. and California law.
Vogel seemed amused that the legislators' look at California as a case study is happening amid the gubernatorial recall uproar.
"The irony of coming to California to study democratic politics . . .," he said, leaving the sentence unfinished.
The chairman of Japan's constitutional review commission, former Foreign Minister Taro Nakayama, will give a free public lecture at the Alumni House on the UC Berkeley campus at noon Tuesday.
About Japan's Peace Constitution
Proposition One Committee
P.O. Box 27217
Washington, D.C. 20038
T: 1-202- 462-0757
F: 1-202-682-4282
e-mail: prop1@prop1.org
Shortly after World War II the Japanese adopted a remarkable Constitution, whose preamble reads:
"We, the Japanese people, acting through our duly elected representatives in the National Diet, determined that we shall secure for ourselves and our posterity the fruits of peaceful cooperation with all nations and the blessings of liberty throughout this land, and resolved that never again shall we be visited with the horrors of war through the action of government, do proclaim that sovereign power resides with the people and do firmly establish this Constitution.
"Government is a sacred trust of the people, the authority for which is derived from the people, the powers of which are exercised by the representative of the people, and the benefits of which are enjoyed by the people. This is a universal principle of mankind upon which this Constitution is founded. We reject and revoke all constitutions, laws, ordinances and rescripts in conflict herewith.
"We, the Japanese people, desire peace for all time and are deeply conscious of the high ideals controlling human relationship, and we have determined to preserve our security and existence, trusting in the justice and faith of the peace-loving peoples of the world. We desire to occupy an honored place in an international society striving for the preservation of peace, and the banishment of tyranny and slavery, oppression and intolerance for all time from the earth.
"We recognize that all peoples of the world have the right to live in peace, free from fear and want.
"We believe that no nation is responsible to itself alone, but that laws of political morality are universal; and that obedience to such laws is incumbent upon all nations who would sustain their own sovereignty and justify their sovereign relationship with other nations.
"We, the Japanese people, pledge our national honor to accomplish these high ideals and purposes with all our resources."
Article 9 of the same 1947 Constitution reads:
"Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.
"In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized."
Now, generations after the Peace Constitution was ratified, it's in serious danger. The U.S. and United Nations are putting pressure on Japan to send their "Self-Defense" Forces overseas to help with U.N. peacekeeping missions.
An editorial which appeared in a mainstream Tokyo paper on November 3, 1994 (the day the Peace Conference opened in Misawa) proposed an amendment abolishing the Preamble and Article Nine.
The Japanese government is officially noncommittal to U.S. and U.N. pressure about sending Japan Defense Forces overseas so far, no doubt due in part to the extremely well-organized opposition they face from the broad coalition of organizations throughout Japan which are campaigning to retain the Peace Constitution.
The position of Gensuikyo, Japan Peace Committee, and "almost all politically aware people in Japan" is that the Japan Defense Forces are unconstitutional and should be disbanded, and that U.S. bases are not needed. They are absolutely opposed to sending troops overseas, and want to reclaim the much-needed land now used by JDF and U.S. bases for housing, farming, and environmental protection.
"We don't need any military bases in Japan," I was told again and again. This position was shared by the Social Democratic Party of Japan ("SDP") until its Chairman, Murayama, was nominated Prime Minister by the Diet to lead the present coalition government with the conservative Liberal Democratic Party. "The 180-degree turnabout by the SDP has shocked the public," said Hiroshe Ide of the Japan Peace Committee. "The SDP has announced it will dissolve now to form a new party, discarding all the political commitments it made in the past."
Perhaps the most disturbing remark by Mr. Ide concerned the official government policy about plutonium, that the Japanese Constitution "does not prohibit nuclear weapons for defense. The government renounces war but does not renounce nuclear weapons. In fact, it has a new agreement with the U.S. to join research in developing plutonium.
"Japan has developed much high-tech equipment in joint research with the U.S. which ultimately is used for military purposes. Japan says the export of arms is strictly banned. But high technology can't be strictly defined as weapons or peace.
"In the 1980's India proposed to the United Nations making the Indian Ocean a Zone of Peace. Only five countries were opposed: the U.S., England, France, Israel, and Japan.
"The Japanese government way is to be vague, and very sly," Mr. Ide concluded.
- More at: http://prop1.org/prop1/jconst.htm (5sep03)
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