Thu, Jun 24, 2004 page9

• Japan is growing likelier to cast away pacifist Constitution

  • AFP
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  The pace is picking up in the movement in Japan toward changing the country's pacifist post-war Constitution, which is seen as hampering the country's ambitions to play a role on the international stage.

  Opinion polls by major newspapers to mark Constitution Day last month all agreed that for the first time in half a century a majority of Japanese were in favor of revising the 1947 Constitution imposed by the Americans during the Allied Occupation at the end of World War II.

  Even 15 years ago, these revisionists were just a tiny minority. Today, a large proportion of Japan's younger generation -- including more than 60 percent of the 20 to 30 age bracket -- who have never known a Japanese war, want constitutional change.

  "Japan is country without a face, without an identity," said Yukie Kudo, a journalist and senior lecturer at Yokohama National University.

  "There is a gap between the reality of the situation and the metaphysical understanding of the Constitution."

  The liveliest debate concerns Article Nine of the Constitution, which states that "the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation," and bans the threat or use of force in settling international disputes.

  It also prohibits the maintenance of armed forces, although Japanese leaders have long asserted that Japan enjoys the right to self-defense accorded any sovereign nation under the UN Charter -- with the military's euphemistic tag as Self Defense Forces providing a constitutional fig leaf.

  That clause prevents the Japanese military from participating in collective security operations such as in Iraq, where Japan's 500 troops are operating independently on a strictly humanitarian, reconstruction mission.

  Last Friday, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's Cabinet approved a plan to allow Japanese troops to stay in Iraq alongside a UN-sanctioned multinational force in Iraq after the transfer to Iraqi sovereignty on June 30.

  But because the multinational troops will be permitted to use force to maintain security, the Japanese soldiers will not be under its unified command.

  Regardless of its contribution in Iraq, the first Japanese deployment since 1945 to a country where fighting is continuing -- despite the government's insistence the troops are in a "non-combat zone" and not in breach of the Constitution -- is a valuable litmus test.

  Japan's hawkish defense minister Shigeru Ishiba, one of a younger generation of politicians who wants to see Japan and its military play a more active role in international crises, and possibly, one day, even step out from under the protective mantle of the US, has predicted the deployment will "have a great impact on the constitutional debate."

  "Because of Article Nine, the US has a responsibility to protect Japan but Japan has no responsibility to protect the US: We are not equal partners," said Kudo.

  Japanese leaders, including Koizumi, want the military to be officially recognized for what it is, and they want to legally designate as "priority assignments" joint overseas security stabilization missions.

  It was Japan's experience in the 1991 Gulf War that put the Constitution back on the political agenda.

  With its hands tied in terms of a military contribution, Japan found that its bankrolling of the war to the tune of US$13 billion, or roughly 20 percent of the total cost, earned only condescension -- if not criticism -- from its allies.

  That humiliation has left its mark on the Japanese political establishment.

  According to a survey published by the Mainichi Shimbun last month, almost 80 percent of lawmakers are in favor of revising the Constitution. Only the tiny communist and socialist parties remain hostile.

  Last November, during campaigning for the general election that returned him to power, Koizumi's ruling Liberal Democratic Party committed itself to drawing up an amendment to the Constitution by November next year, when the party marks its 50th anniversary.

  Since 1991, Japan has been undergoing an evolution "from defensive pacifism to a new active, pro-active pacifism," said Matake Kamiya, professor of international relations at the National Defense Academy of Japan, in a recent panel discussion on Japan's security options before the media.

  Japan is uneasy about the growing military might of China and the specter of a nuclear-armed North Korea, while the Chinese and Koreans who suffered at the hands of Japanese Imperial forces in the last century eye Japan's new internationalist ambitions with distrust.

  In Japan, too, some older voices still call on the younger lawmakers not to forget the hard lessons of history.

  "How well do they know history? Not just the history described in old texts, but the history of the past five to six decades that we carry in living memory," Yohei Kono, a former foreign minister and lower house speaker, said in a recent interview with the Asahi Shimbun.

  "Even if we turn around, we cannot see it. I want [young lawmakers] to re-examine the paths that older people walked before them and learn from them."
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