Sound and Fury: Does Abe’s Constitutional Revision Really Matter?

The prime minister’s push to amend article 9 — on Japan’s eschewing of a military force — has triggered much debate. but other contradictions embedded in that debate make it less crucial than it appears.

MUCH ATTENTION has been paid recently to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo abe’s desire to revise the country’s constitution in what would be the first and only change since it was adopted in 1947. The focus especially has been on his intent to change article 9, which prohibits the country from engaging in war and maintaining armed forces. Indeed, there has been much domestic polarization as well as anger and consternation in some parts of East asia over potential changes to article 9. The two koreas and china, which suffered so much at the hands of the brutal Japanese army in the Pacific War, oppose a more assertive or armed Japan for both sincere and self-interested political and strategic reasons. Undeterred by domestic and international concerns, after abe was re-elected for another term as president of the ruling liberal Democratic Party (LDP) and thus as prime minister in September, he made clear it that he will push ahead to revise article 9.

how we got here — the short-term View

after the return to power in 2012 of abe and the conservative LDP, the party’s now-predominant right wing has been hoping to realize its longdelayed chance to make Japan a more “normal nation” — one with a legitimized military and a situation where Japan can be more like other US allies. They want a Japan unencumbered by the restrictions of article 9, without questions about the legitimacy of contributing to the military alliance with the US, and without so much resistance from a still somewhat anti-militarist public.

In the same year that abe and the LDP resumed power after an unusual three-year hiatus led by the more anti-militarist Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), the LDP came up with an ambitious draft proposal. This would have paid lip service to Japan’s “pacifism” and would have maintained the constitutional prohibition on war and the use of aggressive force contained in article 9. but it also, however, made clearer the legitimacy of the Self-defense Forces, Japan’s powerful existing military (renaming it a “national Defense Force”), giving it the legitimate right to defend itself that had already been the accepted interpretation of article 9. The proposal included the right of collective defense — to come to the aid of the US and possibly other allies, which for most of the postwar period has been opposed by the public and outside the bounds of the cabinet’s interpretation of article 9. Despite opposition, abe and the ldp’s majority in the Diet revised the law last year to make it acceptable under certain strict conditions, but without a constitutional amendment. The 2012 LDP proposal would have enshrined an even more expansive interpretation, closely approximating other american allies.

as adam liff has pointed out: The main goal of the ldp’s proposed revision seems to be to greatly reduce the explicit constitutional constraints on the use of the military, “instead shifting the locus of policy questions about what Japan’s armed forces ‘can/should’ do and ‘can’t/ shouldn’t’ do to the democratically elected Diet to debate and legislate.”

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In some ways, this would be more in line