The Case for Japanese Constitutional Revision Assessed

By Koseki Sho'ichi at Japan Focus (12.12.2006) :

There’s been much discussion of constitutional revision in Japan. In November 2005, celebrating the 50^th anniversary of its formation, the Liberal-Democratic Party published its “Draft of a New Constitution.” In this rapidly changing world, it’s quite risky for a developed country to make a constitution with an eye to the 21^st century. Why? Because this is an age in which the nation-states that shape the modern era are changing dramatically, and because we still can’t see what lies ahead.

The debate over constitutional revision originates in the incompatibility between the Japanese constitution’s renunciation of armaments and the right to make war, on the one hand, and the primacy of the US-Japan security system on the other. No matter how you look at it, it’s risky to dream up a constitution for the 21^st century without addressing—above and beyond US security demands—the changing character of the modern nation-state. In order to see the future, we must first examine the past. The current constitution of Japan has a history of nearly 60 years, and one might think it would be necessary to begin by assessing that history. But the constitutional research committees of the two houses of the Diet that might be expected to take that as their highest duty have failed to do so.

Mr. Kosek's new book, The Scars of War: The Japanese Home Front in World War II, will be published in 2007.