The assassination of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe at an election rally in Nara on Friday last week shook the world to its core. Abe’s death affected the House of Councillors election in Japan on Sunday, but might also affect the project to amend Article 9 of Japan’s constitution.
Enacted after World War II, the constitution was spearheaded by the Allied GHQ and has peace as its main principle. This is reflected in Article 9, which 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 sustained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.”
In other words, Japan only has the right to conduct “passive” individual self-defense and cannot carry out “active” collective self-defense.
After the Korean War started in 1950, at the request of the US, Japan established the National Police Reserve, the predecessor of the Japan Self-Defense Forces, and signed the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security with the US in 1960. These actions triggered protests in Japan.
Then-Japanese prime minister Nobusuke Kishi — Abe’s grandfather — was stabbed by extremists and was forced to step down from office.
Due to the legal and practical obstacles of enacting a constitutional amendment, since the 1980s Japanese Cabinets have focused on expanding the interpretation of “self-defense” to mean “collective defense,” a red line for Article 9.
After taking office as prime minister for the second time in 2012, Abe sought to “normalize” Japan and made amending Article 9 a top priority.
However, according to Paragraph 1, Article 96 of Japan’s constitution, an amendment would only take effect with the approval of at least two-thirds of the members of House of Councilors and House of Representatives — and must then be put to a referendum with at least 50 percent of the vote in favor.
During Abe’s time as prime minister, even though the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and its political allies had the advantage of occupying more than half of the seats in both the upper and lower houses of the Diet, it has been difficult to enact a constitutional amendment.
However, in 2015, by passing a package of national security laws, the Abe administration put into legislation Japan’s right to collective defense.
The move intensified the dispute over the constitutionality of the right to self-defense and led to a new wave of constitutional lawsuits.
After resigning due to health reasons in September 2020, Abe was even more proactive in promoting a constitutional amendment, especially after the LDP and its allies won two-thirds of the seats in the House of Representatives in last year’s general election.
With the momentum extended with Sunday’s election results, Abe’s goal seems to be close at hand.
Campaigning ahead of Sunday’s election, Abe took advantage of public sentiment created by the Russia-Ukraine war to propose that Japan’s defense budget should be raised to at least 2 percent of GDP and that the Self-Defense Forces be regulated by Article 9.
However, despite the assassination — and notwithstanding Sunday’s election results — it is still an open question whether Abe’s dream of normalizing Japan will ever be realized.
Wu Ching-chin is an associate law professor at Aletheia University and the director of the university’s Research Center for Criminal Law.
Translated by Lin Lee-kai
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