On May 3, Japan quietly celebrated the 70th anniversary of the making of its Constitution, raising concern across the country and among the international community of the possibility of bringing an end to the “pacifist tag” of the Constitution of Japan (Nihon-koku Kempo), under Prime Ministership of Shinzo Abe.
And with a big win in the Upper House election, almost half the seats, last year, Abe’s liberal Democratic Party (lDP) is all set to change the very “basic character” of Japan’s Constitution.
However, it all depends on how the lDP leadership convinces its junior coalition partner Komeito as the later is already branding itself as the “opposition within the Government”. Japan observers say that it would be no easy task to take Komeito on board for such a crucial task any time soon. Precisely, it is a party which enjoys its support from pacifist Buddhist organisations such as “Soka Gakkai” and its sympathisers across Japan.
At this point, it is worth unveiling the mystery behind the historic “Article 9” of the Japanese Constitution, which is seen as a symbol of Japan’s post-war resolve to “never again go down the path of militarism”. In fact, the enactment of the Japanese Constitution was promulgated on November 3, 1946, and it came into effect six months later.
And this Constitution was initiated not by the people of Japan, but by General Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers (SCAP). General MacArthur insisted on including three basic points in the draft of the Constitution: “The Emperor is the head of the State; war as a sovereign right of the nation is abolished, and the feudal system of Japan will cease”. This was all instructed to General Whitney, who was overseeing the draft of the Constitution.
The second point in MacArthur’s instructions to Whitney exactly stated, “War as a sovereign right of the nation is abolished. Japan renounces it as an instrument for settling its disputes and even for preserving its security. It relies upon the higher ideals which are now stirring the world for its defence and its protection. No Japanese Army, Navy or Air Force will ever be authorised and no rights of belligerency will be ever be conferred upon any Japanese force”.
Thus, the SCAP’s original wording of Article 9 appeared more or less the same way as drafted earlier when the Constitution came into effect.
Therefore, the political problem created by Japan’s decision to rearm for any defence purposes are far from being solved. The interpretation that the country can possess armed forces for purely defence purposes without contravening Article 9 has ever remained problematic since the very beginning of making the Japanese Constitution. And for this, more than the Occupation Forces, the Japanese leaders of yesteryears were also to be blamed. late Prime Minister Yoshida, who came to power in 1946, once said, “War based on the State’s right to legitimate self defence may be justified, but I think that it is harmful. It is a remarkable fact that many of the wars in recent times have been waged in the name of self defence of the State. I think that the recognition of the right to legitimate has been the reason leading to foolish wars.” Thus the root of the problem behind the enactment of Article 9 lies in the recent past of Japanese politics.
Today, the demand made by the Abe Government can be viewed both from historical and political perspectives. Unlike most of the Constitutions of free nations, Japanese Constitution was not made by its people i.e. representatives either elected or chosen by the populace. So, people did not participate in the making and adoption of the Constitution itself. Quite often, it has been pointed out that expressions such as “democracy”, “democratic” or “democratisation” nowhere appeared in the text of the Constitution. However, the preamble of the Constitution asserts that “sovereign power resides with the people”. Therefore, some leaders in the past such as Yasuhiro Nakasone in 1967, who later served as a Prime Minister from November 1982 to November 1987, once proposed that “The Constitution should be put to a national referendum to test its legitimacy”. He even strongly argued that the Constitution could not be termed as “democratic” and it hardly reflects the free will of the people in true sense of the term because of the circumstances under which it had been established in the past.
Again, the pre-war Meiji Constitution of Japan fully vested “sovereignty in the Emperor” whereas the current 1947 Constitution vests the same with the “people” though purely drafted by Occupation Forces. Besides, this Constitution had provision for universal women suffrage for the first time in the history of Japan. The 1947 Constitution guarantees human rights, the equality of all before the law and non-discrimination on the basis of race, creed, sex, social status or family origin. And more important was the provision of renunciation of war mentioned in Article 9. Unlike this, the Meiji Constitution left open the door for the country’s military to hijack the whole political process and the Constitution in entirety, which eventually led the nation to bloodbath.
But the very idea of revision of the Constitution was included in the “founding objective of the lDP” in 1955 by Abe’s grandfather Nobusuke Kishi. He even lamented the mistaken policies of the occupation authorities and the Constitution for “weakening of the nation” with the “unwarranted suppression of the ideal of the State and patriotism and excessive fragmentation of the powers of the State”. When Kishi became Prime Minister in 1957, he ordered a research commission to go into details about the revision of the Constitution. But before it came up with the recommendations, he was forced to resign. later when the commission came up, then Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda quietly shelved it to avoid public reaction and uproar across Japan.
Once again during the 1991 Gulf War, Japan failed to offer its help to the US-led forces because of Article 9 and the debate of revising the same Article resurfaced. Then 2007, when Abe took over as the Prime Minister for the first time, he passed a law setting out the process through which the necessary national referendum for constitutional revision could take place. And the current phase of revision debate started in the last year when all the pro-revisionist parties had occupied largest number of seats in the Japanese Diet.
Now the question is how it (revision of Article 9) has been viewed by people across Japan and its neighbourhood, particularly by ChinaIJ First of all, even many supporters and sympathisers of the ruling lDP have viewed the probable revision of Article 9 as the beginning of a slippery slope that will turn Japan back to her gory militarist past for which the country had already earned a bad name in and around the continent and in the world.
Second, the advocates of revision opine that the “Article 9” simply hamstrings Japan’s capacity to adequately defend itself from security threats in a world that is increasingly interconnected through massive expansion of trade, information, technology and mass movements of people. In a borderless world like that of today, this Article has been termed as a “roadblock” for the country to usher in an age wherein nations are fast vying for their rightful place with the support of muscle (basically military power), money and mind power. They also argue that there must be a way for Japan to preserve the sanctity of Article 9, while ensuring that the nation can still meet the national security demands in the coming decades.
China views such move as a threat to the region’s peace and security. More or less such considerations are rooted in the rise of China in the last two decades and an imminent threat from the Communist kingdom of North Korea. Many Japanese people want that instead of messing with the Constitution, Abe should rather fix the chronic economic problems of the country at the moment.
For near four decades after 1955 in Japanese politics, the lDP has come to dominate the country’s political system. For all the chaos, a seriously weak Opposition party system has to be blamed. The problem is that today Japan has one dominant party, not a one party system. The main Opposition, Democratic Party (DP), has not been successful in taking on the Abe Government on major policy making process and it has a grave impact on the emerging political culture of the nation. Therefore, the conservative members of the lDP are stressing that the party must get back to its roots and fulfil the goals set by its founders. This has rightly emboldened Abe than an unorganised Opposition plank to block him from amending the vital provisions of the Constitution.
What exactly does Abe want to doIJ Undoubtedly, he has brought a new dimension to Japan’s nationalism. His politics of contested nationalism is much more worrying than rewarding as it seems so far. He has criticised his party outright for attempting to remain a “party to maintain power”.
What he desires is that the lDP must change the Constitution once imposed by the “Occupation Forces” led by America. After winning a landslide victory in the Upper House election, he aired his view to the nation that his party had always been committed to rewrite the post-war Constitution. But he hoped that
deliberations by expert panels and a nationwide public debate would lead to a consensus on which parts of the Constitution needed amendment.
But ironically, he studiously downplayed the issue of revision during the Upper House poll. Rather he insisted that that election was a great opportunity for his lDP to
reaffirm support from the people on his troubled economic policies.
He could easily play around as the Japanese Opposition parties were unable to offer any credible policy alternatives to the voters.
An important new book, “Rethinking Japan: The Politics of Contested Nationalism,” by two senior British scholars of Japan namely, Arthur Stockwin and Kweku Ampiah, (lexington Books, lanham, Boulder, New York, london, 2017), discusses the main contentious issues.
Both the authors warn that “the new Japan that is emerging … will be more controlled, less democratic, less oriented toward peace, more internationally assertive, more inclined to confront neighbouring countries, more unequal, more stressed, more concerned to flaunt national traditions reflecting the ethos of a militaristic past, more inward looking and less internationalist than the world became used to in the postwar years.” For now, Abe will go slow as he has already got his security-related Bills passed in September 2015.
This has allowed him to exercise limited forms of collective self defence and the same will also help him in addressing concerns about US-Japan alliance cooperation, such as in the event of a contingency surrounding the disputed Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands or North Korean crisis.
Finally, with the critical role played by Komeito and popular distrust of Abe’s intentions for his Government’s linkage with right wing groups such as Nippon Kaigi, the revision may not be that easy though he has the numbers in hand.
But it seems, over the years, the lDP has learnt its lessons to survive in Japanese politics. The party, which started out to revise the country’s Constitution, now downplayed its revanchist goals and rather yearning for retaining political power has taken the centre stage in the lDP.
This overarching goal has ironically pushed the party to the centre of politics where the Opposition has miserably failed to stop the lDP.
(The writer is an expert on international affairs)