![]() ![]() Indeed, the Diet has not put forth an officially sanctioned interpretation of Article Nine’s significance with one definitive voice. Such political efforts have routinely stalled and public opinion has always disfavored constitutionally altering Japan’s longstanding identity as a pacifist island nation. While seeking consonance between the SDF and the constitution is understandable, efforts to revise Article Nine have nevertheless been dubbed the “third rail” of Japanese politics. After all, official sanction of the SDF would permit it to boldly fill its role and even expand without concerns about the constitutionality of its very existence. Perhaps due to this glaring contradiction in Japan’s founding text and its growing self-defense forces, Japanese politicians have for decades mulled over proposals to amend the constitution to expressly bless the SDF’s existence and delineate its powers. Such a right, even if in contradiction with the plain text of the national constitution, cannot be nullified or waived even by constitutional limitations. Still, under international legal norms, every state enjoys the inalienable right to act in self-defense of its territory and sovereignty. 4 Despite these gradual developments, by a plain reading of Article Nine, the SDF would appear unconstitutional, since it constitutes “land, sea, and air forces” maintained by the Japanese Government. In 2019, the SDF took an important step in broadening its mission by deploying troops abroad in support of a multinational force separate from the United Nations (UN) for the first time ever. 3 Year over year, the SDF has filled an increasingly vital role in safeguarding Japanese interests abroad and protecting the Japanese in times of natural disaster. Most notably, the SDF was founded in 1954 as a quasi-military force with the avowed purpose of defending the Japanese homeland from invasion. However, while never constitutionally amended or otherwise qualified, Article Nine shed much of its significance in the decades following 1946. Instead, Japanese forces would be required to implement a slower, more diplomatic approach to disputes. For Japan’s neighbors, this was a very important and uncommon reassurance: Japan’s constitutional promise to renounce war undoubtedly comforted neighboring states that in the event future conflict should arise, Japan would not reactively turn to warring means to resolve a dispute. Japan-under its occupying American victors-henceforth committed itself to diplomacy rather than war to resolve future international disputes. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized. In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. Based on the Kellogg-Briand Pact, Article Nine of the postwar Japanese Constitution embodies Japan’s pacifist foundation:Īspiring 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. 1 The prevailing wartime context is central to understanding how and why Japan’s constitutional pacifism clause came to be in 1946. Occupying American military forces unilaterally drafted the terms of a new Japanese constitution at the conclusion of World War II, penning a foundational document that would govern a recently devastated nation for generations to come. Doing so would bring Japanese air superiority on par with Japan’s renowned naval forces and reinvigorate the US-Japan alliance. The United States can take certain steps to promote a broad constitutional reading, which would serve national defense interests and promote peace in a region featuring emboldened Chinese military forces and an erratic North Korean leader. Such a reading would bolster American military interests in the Indo-Pacific theater, since Japan is one of America’s most formidable allies in the region. ![]() ![]() This article supports a broader SDF mission but proposes an abandonment of Prime Minister Abe’s proposed constitutional amendment in favor of a broadly construed constitutional reading of “self-defense” with support from international legal norms. But why? Abe’s proposal embodies one of the Japanese Liberal Democratic Party’s (LDP) central political platforms, yet according to public opinion polling in Japan, such a proposal is very unlikely to pass in a referendum, assuming it first passes in both chambers of the Japanese Diet, as constitutionally required. Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe seeks a bold and unprecedented constitutional amendment to expressly acknowledge Japan’s Self-Defense Forces (SDF) and their limits.
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