Japan’s Peace Constituition: The Watershed of September 2015
A look on Japan’s National Security Laws from the eyes of movie director John Junkerman
by John Junkerman
(Top photo:（C）2015 SIGLO)
On September 10, just as four months of debate in the Japanese Diet on a set of controversial national security bills was reaching its climax, Japan was slammed with torrential typhoon-induced rains. Just north of Tokyo, the raging waters of the Kinugawa river broke through a flood berm, unleashing a tsunami-like wave that coursed through a residential district, sweeping away homes and creating a lake several feet deep that stretched for miles.
This natural disaster seemed an apt metaphor for what many consider the man-made disaster that was taking place in the Diet. The new security laws, which were eventually passed by the Diet in the wee hours of September 19, represent a dramatic break from Japan’s postwar defense posture, which has limited its military forces exclusively to the defense of Japan itself. The new legislation incorporates the principle of “collective self-defense,” which essentially means that an attack on an ally (primarily the United States) may be considered an attack on Japan itself.
While the government placed conditions on the exercise of collective self-defense (it must be the last resort in a situation where Japan’s peace and prosperity face an existential threat), many are concerned that the new laws open the floodgates and make it more likely that Japan will get involved in conflicts overseas.
Since 1972, the Japanese government had explicitly stated that the exercise of collective self-defense (specifically sending troops to fight overseas) is prohibited by the Japanese Constitution. The no-war clause of the constitution, Article 9, states in part, “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.” This has been construed to mean that Japan can fight in self-defense in its own territory, but cannot fight overseas.
In July 2014, the government of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe announced a reinterpretation of the constitution; it would hereafter be understood to mean that the exercise of collective self-defense did not violate Article 9. The laws passed by the Diet September 19 implemented this new interpretation, allowing Japan to engage in military action anywhere in the world, under certain conditions.
There was widespread criticism that the security bills violated the constitution, a view held by the vast majority of constitutional scholars. This is not surprising. It strained belief to think that what had been considered unconstitutional for decades could, simply by “reinterpretation,” now be deemed constitutional. The leaders of the Abe government rather haughtily dismissed these concerns, arguing that they understood the security of the nation better than the scholars do. They also dismissed public opinion, which ran 2 to 1 against the bills; fully 80 percent of the Japanese public believed the government was rushing the bills through without proper explanation. Over the summer, opposition grew steadily, peaking in a demonstration of 120,000 people at the Diet on August 30, and continuing with nearly daily demonstrations of tens of thousands of protestors in mid-September. They were the largest demonstrations Japan had seen since the 1960s.
I first learned of the Japanese Constitution and Article 9 when I came to Japan as a high-school exchange student from the US in 1969. I was just 16, but this was the height of the Vietnam War and, facing the prospect of being drafted and sent to fight in Vietnam, I had thought a lot about the war and felt strongly that it was morally wrong and politically misguided. To discover that Japan had a constitution that renounced war came as a welcome shock. Only 24 years had passed since the end of World War II, and disabled veterans in white kimonos still begged for assistance outside of the train stations. Many of the adults I met had lived through the war and, regardless of their politics, were committed to pacifism.
Meanwhile, many of the young people I became friends with were deeply opposed to the Vietnam War, especially Japan’s involvement as a staging ground and supply base for that war. The US-Japan Security Treaty that obliged Japan to provide bases for the US military was up for renewal in 1970, and opposition among students was especially strong. So, I was introduced, at an early age, to the two contradictory pillars of Japan’s postwar: the Peace Constitution and the abiding pacifism of the Japanese people; and the Security Treaty, which ties Japan into a subordinate relationship to the military superpower, America.
Nowhere is this contradiction and tension more evident than in Okinawa. I lived there for six months in early 1976. The Vietnam War had ended, but the island appeared in places like a giant parking lot for surplus and damaged equipment from the war. Sprawling American bases covered the island, and the phrase used at the time, “Okinawa exists within the bases,” seemed literally true. Still today, nearly 20 percent of the main island of Okinawa is occupied by the US military. (This is the subject of my most recent film, “Okinawa: The Afterburn,” which is now screening in theaters across Japan.)
The push and pull between the constitution and the military alliance with the US has been a defining factor of the US-Japan relationship over the decades since. One of the first articles I wrote as a freelance writer for The Progressive magazine in the early 1980s was titled “Reluctant Warriors.” It detailed the pressure the US was placing on Japan to rearm. Now that Japan had established itself as a global economic power, the argument went, it was time to increase its spending for international security. Japan responded in 1978 by introducing what was called the “sympathy budget,” that expanded over the years to more than $1 billion annually, covering some 75% of the costs of the US military bases in Japan (including land rent, utilities, salaries of Japanese baseworkers, etc.).
The pressures on Japan increased after the 1990–91 Gulf War. Japan made the largest financial contribution to the war effort, some $13 billion, but it did not send troops. It was subsequently criticized for practicing “checkbook diplomacy,” there were calls for Japan to put “boots on the ground” in the future. Of course, this was not possible as long as the constitution prevented Japan from engaging in collective self-defense, but Japan did respond in 1992 by passing legislation that authorized its participation in UN peacekeeping operations, which it has consistently done since. Meanwhile, there was a steady increase in the strength of the Self-Defense Forces and their cross-training and integration with US forces in Japan.
The 9.11 Al Qaeda attacks on the US in 2001 further shifted the ground beneath the constitution. Japan supported the US-led attacks on Afghanistan, providing refueling services to the naval fleet in the Indian Ocean. When the Iraq War began in 2003, there were again calls for Japan to put “boots on the ground,” and Japan responded by sending a unit of the SDF to Iraq in January 2004. Many in Japan saw this action, the first dispatch of the SDF to a country where armed conflict was still taking place, as a violation of the constitution, but the government insisted that the SDF would be limited to reconstruction efforts in a zone where conflict had ended.
The government was then led by Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, who openly called for revising the constitution to allow for collective self-defense. “But the time is not ripe for changing the constitution,” he testified in the Diet, “so we’re using all our wits to explore gaps in the constitution,” to decide how Japan could join the war effort in Iraq.
The constitution had not been revised, but there was widespread sentiment in the media and political circles that the “war on terror” was a game changer, and the Liberal Democratic Party announced plans to draft a new constitution in 2005. Public opinion polls had shifted to the point where a 2–1 majority supported revising the constitution, and it appeared that it was just a matter of time until Article 9 was scrapped.
It was at this point that I decided to make the film “Japan’s Peace Constitution,” together with my Japanese colleagues at Siglo, a Tokyo-based independent production company. We began the project with a sense of resignation, but also a sense of alarm that Japan was about to discard its admirable commitment to pacifism, while politicians and the public had only a superficial awareness of the history of the constitution or the international implications of abandoning Article 9. We chose to present a global perspective on the constitution, even if this amounted to its swan song.
It is often said that the constitution was “imposed on Japan by the US Occupation.” It’s true that it was drafted in February 1946 by officials in the occupation government, but other drafts of a democratic constitution were circulating among Japanese citizens at the time, and Article 9 itself may have originated with the pacifist postwar prime minister, Kijuro Shidehara. The Japanese public enthusiastically embraced the no-war clause of the constitution when it came into effect in May 1947.
In fact, after the Cold War intensified, it was the United States that pressured Japan to revise Article 9. For example, then-vice president Richard Nixon visited Japan in 1953 and declared the Peace Constitution a mistake; he called on Japan to join the international anticommunist alliance. Article 9 was then interpreted to allow for self-defense, and the Self-Defense Forces were established in 1954. When the Liberal Democratic Party was established in 1955, its platform called for the revision of Article 9 and the establishment of a full-fledged military.
A decade after World War II ended, conservative Japanese politicians were declaring, “Times have changed, and we need to revise the constitution to meet these changed circumstances.” It is a mantra that has been repeated, essentially verbatim, for 60 years, even as the Cold War ended and, arguably, threats to Japanese security diminished.
My film explored this history, and also examined the impact that changing the constitution would have on Japan’s relations with its Asian neighbors. “Japan has long been criticized for not having apologized for its aggression during World War II,” the American political scientist Chalmers Johnson noted. “I’ve always felt that the Japanese did apologize. The apology was Article 9. It was a statement to the rest of East Asia: ‘You have no reason in the future ever to fear Japanese military behavior, because we have now formally, publicly, legally renounced the use of armed force except as a final resort in our own self-defense.” Korean historian Han Hong Koo echoed these thoughts: “It has remained unresolved whether Japan has truly broken with its past. The doubts of Asian countries have been barely kept in check because of Article 9 of the constitution.”
Proponents of revision often argue that no other major country in the world operates with the kind of restrictions found in Japan’s constitution, so it needs to be changed in order for Japan to be a “normal” nation. But, as historian John W. Dower remarked, “I’m not impressed by wanting to be a normal nation, because I don’t know what that means. If you want to be normal like the United States, I find that terrifying at this moment in history because America has become a very militaristic society.”
Far from being a “normal” nation, the United States has been an outlier in recent decades, choosing to prioritize military power and the exercise of military force throughout the world. While US troop levels are virtually unchanged since 2000, Germany, France, and the United Kingdom have reduced their standing armies by half or more since the 1990s. During these years, Japan has kept its troop level stable at around 245,000, which means it now has a larger military than the largest European countries.
This course of history, in which Japan was drawn ever deeper into a military alliance with the US and seemed destined to discard the Peace Constitution made me feel deeply chagrined, and as an American, I felt a responsibility to make a statement. Of course, a documentary film cannot change the course of history, but it can perhaps make us more conscious of it.
What ensued in the years after 2004 was truly surprising. At the initiative of Nobel Prize-winning writer Kenzaburo Oe and eight other prominent intellectuals, regional and interest-group Article 9 Associations were launched across the country (I was a founding member of the Cineastes Article 9 Association). Within a few years, there were over 7,000 of these associations, large and small, each holding periodic meetings, lectures, and film screenings. In addition to my film, a number of other films dealing with the history of the constitution were made and screened widely.
By about 2007, public opinion regarding the constitution turned around completely, until the public opposed revising the constitution by a 2–1 margin. I think there were two factors at play in this remarkable reversal. One was that the efforts of Article 9 Associations and other groups deepened understanding of the history of the constitution and its fundamental role in setting limits on governmental authority and protecting citizen’s rights. The preface to the constitution begins, “We, the Japanese people, resolved that never again shall we be visited with the horrors of war through the action of the government, do proclaim that sovereign power resides with the people and do firmly establish this Constitution.” I think there was a reawakening of consciousness of the constitution as a “people’s charter.”
The second factor at play was the disastrous results of the American-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. It was increasingly evident that the wars were not only meaningless, they were also counterproductive, savaging two countries and their civilian populations, creating new enemies through the Middle East, and spawning new terrorist groups and attacks. It became clear to the Japanese public that, had the constitution allowed it, Japan’s military would have been deeply involved, as “boots on the ground,” in these misguided wars.
It was around this time (2006–07) that Shinzo Abe served a one-year term as prime minister. While he enacted legislation that set up procedures for a public referendum to ratify constitutional changes, the public mood was such that the Liberal Democratic Party did not attempt to revise the constitution. It seemed as if Article 9 had dodged a bullet.
However, five years later in 2012, Abe returned to office and, like a zombie, the effort to revise the constitution rose from the dead. But this time, Abe took a different tack: he appointed a self-selected board of advisors to review the principle of collective self-defense, and they not surprisingly reported back that it did not violate the constitution. Once again, the old mantra of “times have changed” was cited as the grounds for changing the interpretation of the constitution.
Specifically, what was understood to have changed was the rapid growth in China’s military spending, intensifying territorial disputes in the South and East China seas, and North Korea’s continuing development of nuclear weapons. Whether or not these security challenges represent the existential threat the government claims they are, very few legal scholars were convinced that the changing environment justified abandoning the long-standing interpretation of the constitution. If the government wants to change the mission and range of Japan’s military forces, it should revise the constitution first, they argued.
Collective self-defense is the act of aiding an ally when that ally is under attack. It is often said that this “right” was “bestowed by the UN Charter,” but it is more accurate to say that the UN Charter recognized self-defense as an exception to its more universal prohibition of the use of force. Article 51 of the charter states that “Nothing in the present charter shall impair the inherent right of individual or collective self defense if an armed attack occurs against a member of the United Nations.” Of course, nothing in the charter prevents a country from renouncing that right, as Japan’s constitution does.
No country has interpreted this clause more broadly than Japan’s main ally, the United States. The US claimed the “right” to collective self-defense when it launched the Vietnam War after the Tonkin Gulf Incident in 1964. As we know, that war continued for nearly 11 years, costing the lives of 58,000 Americans and more than 2 million Vietnamese. The US also claimed the “right” to exercise collective self-defense preemptively in the Iraq War, on the specious grounds that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction that it planned to use against the US and its allies. That war too continued for a decade, with tragic consequences that we live with still today.
If Japan can now exercise this “right,” what is to prevent it from becoming embroiled in what are actually wars of aggression masquerading as “collective self-defense”? In testimony during the Diet debate, Prime Minister Abe denied that Japan would have sent its forces to fight in those wars, but how will Japan find the resolve to say “no” the next time the US presses it to put “boots on the ground”? The exact scope and conditions for the exercise of collective self-defense were left vague, to be evaluated by the government on a case-by-case basis.
The US, of course, welcomed the new legislation. For the past 15 years at least, it has explicitly encouraged Japan to recognize collective self-defense. While it is unlikely that the US will launch another major war in the near future, Japan will be called upon to increase its cooperation with American operations in East and South Asia, and intensify training that will allow it to engage in joint missions. All of this is aimed at countering China, and the new posture is very likely to exacerbate tensions with that country.
At a rally outside the Diet on September 14, before the legislation passed, Kenzaburo Oe declared, “If these laws pass, it will be the end of Japan under the Peace Constitution.” This dire prediction may come to pass. Article 9 remains in the constitution, but it is a dead letter if it no longer serves as a brake on the operations of the Self Defense Forces. Efforts to challenge the constitutionality of the laws are being prepared and the strong consensus of the legal community against the legislation offers some hope, but Japanese courts rarely rule against the government. A reversal of the laws would be a strong and heartening statement of support for the rule of law and constitutional democracy, but we can only be cautiously optimistic.
One ray of hope is the tenacity of public opinion in opposition to war. The 2–1 majority opposed to revising Article 9 has remained fairly consistent for the past eight years, and the new laws were opposed by the same margin. The Abe regime’s disrespect for public sentiment sparked outrage and a new insistence on popular sovereignty, a consciousness that is not likely to dissipate soon. This spirit was especially marked among young people, who in many ways led the opposition movement over the summer. An organization called Students Emergency Action for Liberal Democracy was founded just last May and has spread nationwide, with articulate and charismatic spokespeople. They were joined by housewives and academics, actors and musicians and film directors, who filled out the diminishing ranks of peace activists who lived through the war. It may be the most inclusive, grass-roots movement Japan has ever seen.
There is an election for the Upper House of the Diet scheduled for next summer, and already activists are organizing to vote out politicians who supported the new laws. It will take a great effort to overturn the entrenched power of the Liberal Democratic Party, but the possibility remains that the summer of 2015 will represent a moment, not of the death of pacifism, but of the renaissance of democracy in Japan.
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John Junkerman is a Tokyo-based American documentary filmmaker. His “Japan’s Peace Constitution” was named Best Documentary of 2005 by the Japanese film magazine Kinema Jumpo. His most recent film, “Okinawa: The Afterburn,” addresses the problem of American military bases on Okinawa. It is in theatrical release in Japan and will be screened in various American cities later this fall.
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“Okinawa: The Afterburn” Special Screening(English Version)
October 6(Tues) @Hibiya Convention Hall, Tokyo(Hibiya Library & Museum B1)
18:15 Doors open 18:30 “Okinawa: The Afterburn”(148 minutes) 21:00–21:45 Discussion with Director John Junkerman and Sophia University Professor Nakano Koichi
Tickets at the door: 1500yen(Students 1000yen)
Originally published at ignition.co.
