Should any of us be alarmed that Japan’s new government wants to amend the constitution imposed on it in 1945 under U.S. occupation? As we have been following, neighboring nations that got clobbered by pre-war Japan aren’t the only parties concerned. This editorial from Japan’s Hokkaido Shimbun joins in the concern, charging that the administration of Shinzo Abe is using the issue of whether to hold an official ceremony for ‘National Sovereignty Day’ as a ‘stepping stone’ to his goal of changing Japan’s constitution – and building a proper military.
The Hokkaido Shimbun editorial says in part:
At the latest Budget Committee session, Abe stated that ‘both the Constitution and the Fundamental Law of Education were created under the Allied Occupation, when Japan’s sovereignty had been taken away,’ and he concluded that the current postwar constitution was imposed by the General Headquarters of the Allied Powers.
One must not sit idly by if Abe’s purpose is to use National Soveriegnty Day as a stepping-stone to his goal of revising the Constitution. … The old Constitution led Japan down the road of militarism, plunging it into reckless wars that brought devastation to other Asian nations and peoples as well as its own.
The announcement has created deep suspicion that the ceremony would be used as a milestone toward the realization of amending the Constitution. If the ceremony’s sole purpose is to ignore the seven years Japan spent under occupation and reinterpret the pacifist Constitution negatively, we cannot support it.
Such a distorted interpretation of history would not only give a wrong impression to generations to come, but it is our responsibility to avoid send confusing messages to neighboring countries.
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