Newsletter No. 996
Editorial-Opinion
April 28, 2008

 

KIROKU HANAI ON THE TENSIONS BETWEEN THE ALLIANCE AND THE LAW

Support for the pacifist Japanese Constitution remains quite strong among the general public. A recent Yomiuri Shinbun poll found that no less than 82% of the Japanese public favors keeping Article Nine of the Constitution in place. However, among that 18% that do favor throwing away the Constitution resides the vast majority of the conservative political elite and its legions of media commentators.

Many of the American “alliance managers” also tend to dismiss the Constitution. Indeed, in a conversation with the LDP’s Hidenao Nakagawa in July 2004, then-Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage once asserted that Article Nine was an “obstacle” to the strengthening of the US-Japan Alliance.

It is refreshing, then, to find the following opinion article published today in the Japan Times. The author is a former editorial writer for the Tokyo Shinbun. The Japanese Left seems to have relatively few articulate and politically-informed commentators. Hanai, however, seems to be among this small group.

Preserving the Constitution
By Kiroku Hanai

Signs of shakiness have begun to appear in the alliance between Japan and the United States, which seemed to get increasingly strong under the coalition government of the Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito, especially after the enactment of two laws that removed some of the obstacles to actions to be taken by the Self-Defense Forces in case of emergency. The change has been triggered by the resounding victory scored by the Democratic Party of Japan in the Upper House election in July last year, giving the opposition camp a majority in the Upper House.

The governing coalition had to wait until Feb. 21 to resume fuel supply by Maritime Self-Defense Force ships to American and other naval vessels engaged in antiterrorist operations in the Indian Ocean, because the special law authorizing such supply expired at the end of October and the opposition parties in the Upper House blocked its renewal.

Meanwhile, the Japanese government's disbursement of funds to help finance part of the costs of maintaining U.S. military bases in Japan was suspended at the end of March when the bilateral agreement for that purpose expired. The new accord to replace it was approved by the Lower House on April 3, but was rejected on April 25 by the Upper House controlled by the opposition. Under a constitutional provision, the Lower House voting takes precedence over the Upper House voting. Thus the new accord goes into effect after an about month's delay.

To make matters worse for the government, the Nagoya High Court ruled April 17 that certain aspects of the operations by the Air Self-Defense Force troops dispatched to Iraq violated the war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution. The ruling in effect endorsed the DPJ's campaign slogan in last year's Upper House election that the SDF troops must be withdrawn from Iraq immediately. The government has ignored this on grounds that the plaintifffs' demand for solatia payments and troop withdrawal had been rejected and that the ruling on the constitutionality issue was contained in a side opinion. Traditionally, Japanese courts have been reluctant in passing judgment on constitutionality questions, and it has been customary for them to make a ruling containing such judgments only in relation to specific isolated issues. That is why the plaintiffs demanded solatia payments of the symbolically small sum of ¥10,000 per person, and from the outset they had expected it to be rejected. They boast a substantive victory, however, because some of the ASDF activities were ruled unconstitutional even if the decision was expressed in a side opinion. Earlier, the Osaka High Court ruled, also in a side opinion, that former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's visit to Yasukuni Shrine, where war criminals are enshrined along with the war dead, was unconstitutional, causing much social repercussion.

In July 2009, the special law for assisting reconstruction of Iraq, which is the basis on which the SDF troops are sent to that country, is scheduled to expire. Any attempt on the part of the government to extend the law will certainly be met with even stronger resistance from the opposition camp, which was the case with the resumption of supplying fuel in the Indian Ocean, because the position of the opposition parties has been strengthened by the recent high court ruling.

In order to avoid the trouble of having the Diet pass a law every time troops are to be sent abroad, the government and the ruling coalition are contemplating enacting a "permanent" law under which troops may be sent overseas at the discretion of the government. But that would be no easy task as an increasing number of Komeito and DPJ lawmakers have become cautious following the court ruling.

Although Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda claims that Japan is making an international contribution by sending its troops abroad, that contribution appears to be aimed at helping only the U.S. After all, Japan in effect is faithfully performing what it regards as its duty to Washington by helping it in the American-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Has Fukuda forgotten the time when Japan adopted the Constitution, which proclaimed not to have any means of conducting war, be they troops, naval ships or warplanes, let alone sending troops abroad? At that time, the whole nation was proud to be totally demilitarized -- it was an ideal place to live. The citizens interpreted in a literal sense the war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution, which reads, "land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized."

The start of the Korean War in June 1950, however, triggered a total change in the occupation policy of the U.S., which had played the principal role in drafting the war-renouncing clause. A month later, the quasi-military "National Police Reserve" was created under the order of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, supreme commander of the occupation forces. It was so named because expressions like "military" and "forces" could not be used because of the constitutional provisions. The Japanese government fell in line with the commander by agreeing that rearmament could be permitted if only for self-defense. This marked the beginning of the de facto amendment of the nation's supreme statute through interpretation.

The National Police Reserve subsequently changed its name to "National Safety Force," and then to its present "Self-Defense Forces" in 1954. Former Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida came up with a strange definition of the SDF as "military forces with no war potential." The government's efforts to mislead citizens were represented by invention of new words like "special vehicle" for a tank, "escort ship" for a destroyer, "ordinary man" for a foot soldier, and "special man" for an artillery man.

Today, Japan's defense budget is the fifth largest in the world. Except for a ban on overseas military activities, the nation now has military power that is virtually no different from that of the prewar days. Article 9 of the Constitution has thus lost much of its meaning. Political parties in the opposition camp and a large number of citizens fear that the last boundary of the no-war clause has been crossed when troops to Iraq were dispatched.

The Nagoya High Court ruled that the operations of the Air Self-Defense Force in Iraq violated not only the special law that prohibited the use of force and restricted its activities to no-combat zones but also Article 9 of the Constitution because (1) the ASDF airlifts of armed soldiers of the multinational force were acts that could be identified as an involvement with the use of force by other nations, and (2) the airlift destination of Baghdad was part of a combat zone. This was an eloquent expression of the fears among Japanese citizens, and represented a judgment most appropriate for the tribunal charged with the responsibility of protecting the Constitution.

In recent years, Japan has been aggressive in promoting military cooperation with the U.S. both at home and abroad. But the American-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq have been drawn into a quagmire, the strong U.S. ally of Pakistan now faces insecurity and political instability, and there is mounting criticism even within the U.S. of a strategic fiasco committed by Washington. All these have led two leading Democratic presidential aspirants, Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, to call for a withdrawal of troops from Iraq.

There is no reason for Japan to continue supporting the miscalculated policies of the Bush administration at the risk of violating its own Constitution. The ruling of the Nagoya High Court should serve to start discussions among both governing coalition and opposition parties on withdrawing the SDF troops from Iraq.