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Making the Japanese Constitution: A Further Look

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 September 2013

Justin Williams
Justin Williams
Affiliation:
University of Maryland
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Extract

American scholars generally take a dim view of the 1946 Constitution of Japan. Because it carries the imprint of a foreign political philosophy and, more particularly, because it was allegedly imposed through the willful and covert action of an American field commander, that instrument, they feel, is off key and should be rewritten. Their case was well stated some years ago by Harold S. Quigley, in these words:

… the SCAP draft Constitution … has been regarded widely in Japan as a foreign imposition not wholly suited to a people of very different legal and social traditions…. [It was] written hastily by men without adequate knowledge of Japanese civilization and with little regard … for the national right of self-determination…. The decision to prepare a constitution was made by General MacArthur, who interpreted directives from Washington liberally. These directives … did not require SCAP to write a new constitution…. they specifically laid down … that the new government should be established “in accordance with the freely expressed will of the Japanese people.”

Type
Research Article
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 59 , Issue 3 , September 1965 , pp. 665 - 679
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1965

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References

1 “Revising the Japanese Constitution,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 38, No. 1 (10 1959), p. 140CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The Far Eastern Commission, created at Moscow in December 1945, supposedly to make Allied occupation policy, was composed of four veto powers (U. S., Great Britain, U.S.S.R., China) and nine other members (Australia, Canada, France, India, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Philippines, and—after November 1949—Burma and Pakistan).

2 Takayanagi, Kenzo, “Making the Japanese Constitution: What Really Happened,” Japan Times, 03 16, 1959Google Scholar.

3 Quigley, op. cit., p. 142.

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid., p. 144. Quigley based this prediction on the probability of a Socialist Party split which subsequently occurred.

6 Ardath W. Burks reflects this ambivalence by writing, on the one hand: “ … Yoshida Shigeru … feels that [the new Constitution] is well designed for modern Japan. Dr. Takayanagi … denied … that the constitition was … imposed. … Had the MacArthur Constitition been presented … as a sharp break with tradition … it might possibly have been accepted and have been acceptable.” But on the other hand: “… the historic fact [is] the constitution represents alien authorship, in that it was imposed … by SCAP…. it is safe to predict that public opinion will steadily mobilize behind the movement for limited revision.” Burks, Ardath W., The Government of Japan, 2d ed. (New York, 1964), pp. 17–30Google Scholar.

7 To suggest that GHQ arrogated to itself a function which the State Department's Office of Far East Affairs had intended to perform through the instrumentality of the Far Eastern Commission, Hugh Borton writes, relative to the obstinacy of the Japanese government against proposing fundamental constitutional changes: “This situation resulted in the Government Section of SCAP taking steps to make sure that it would play the dominant part in the revision of the Constitution.” Jones, F. C., Borton, Hugh and Pearn, B. R., Survey of International Affairs, 1939–1946: The Far East, 1942–1946 (London, 1955), p. 329Google Scholar. In a slightly different manner, Theodore McNelly suggests that MacArthur usurped the constitutional revision role: “[Inas-much as] ‘any directives dealing with fundamental changes in the Japanese constitutional structure … will be issued only following … agreement in the Far Eastern Commission’ … it would appear that constitutional reform in Japan could not be unilaterally carried out by the American occupation authorities.” McNelly, Theodore, Contemporary Government of Japan (Boston, 1963), p. 29Google Scholar.

8 “ … The final draft … as … approved by GHQ … contained much that the Cabinet as a whole could not bring itself to agree to, particularly regarding the position of the Emperor…. when it had been ascertained that His Majesty had been heard to say that … there seemed to be nothing particularly wrong about the definition in it of the position of the Emperor… the conclusion was reached … to accept the final version sent to us from GHQ….” Yoshida, Shigeru, The Yoshida Memoirs—The Story of Japan in Crisis (Boston, 1962), p. 135Google Scholar. “After the draft … had been completed, it was submitted for discussion to the Privy Council, the Lower House of the Diet and the House of Peers, the members of which official assemblies included Japan's foremost authorities on law and administration …. therefore, it is correct to say that the best informed elements among the Japanese people had a hand in shaping it, a point which is in these days too easily and too often ignored.” Ibid., p. 145.

9 Though not a member of the Quigley school, John M. Maki is bold enough to mention, but not explain, three novel and impractical alternative solutions to the problem of constitutional reform: indefinite continuation of the contradictory situation between the occupation reforms and the Imperial Constitution; suspension of that Constitution to eliminate the contradiction; step-by-step development by the Japanese of their own basic law under occupation tutelage. Maki, John M., Government and Politics in Japan—The Road to Democracy (New York, 1962), p. 78Google Scholar.

10 When Premier Nobuske Kishi proposed in 1957 to discuss restoration of the Emperor's status to that of “Head of State”—which, he pointed out, would not change the functions of the Throne—the New York Times commented: “It would, however, give some emphasis to the way in which Japanese thought is moving. Any such discussion will be closely watched by the United States.” New York Times, March 17, 1957.

11 The Department of State made available to the writer the contents of the SWNCC 228 folder.

12 Blakeslee, George H., The Far Eastern Commission—A Study in International Cooperation, 1945–1952 (State Department Publication 5138, 12 1953), p. 45Google Scholar; Borton, Hugh, Japan's Modern Century (New York, 1955), note 5, pp. 423–24Google Scholar.

13 Burks, p. 26; McNelly, p. 39; Blakeslee, p. 45.

14 Ward, Robert E., “The Origins of the Present Japanese Constitution,” this Review, Vol. 50 (12 1956), pp. 990–91Google Scholar. In this 30-page article, Ward is highly critical of the U. S. government for demanding drastic revision of the Meiji Constitution and of the Supreme Commander for doing the bidding of his government. He holds that the Allied powers and the Supreme Commander could favor and support but not impose a democratic form of government on Japan. Appreciating why both the United States and Japan, for somewhat different reasons, opposed participation of the Far Eastern Commission in constitutional revision, he complains nevertheless because that international body was not permitted to perform this function. Forgetting that in August 1945 Japanese Cabinet members “sobbed loudly” on accepting the terms of surrender (Kase, Toshikazu, Journey to the “Missouri” [New Haven, 1950], p. 253)Google Scholar, he notes that members of the Shidehara Cabinet in February 1946 tearfully endorsed, at MacArthur's urging, a U. S. plan for democratizing Japan's traditional form of government in fulfillment of the terms of surrender. Notwithstanding Japan's remarkable progress under the new Constitution, he insists that the Japanese electorate is in a state of shock from conducting governmental affairs by an alien political philosophy. Conceding that the Supreme Commander was under orders to carry out a radical governmental reform plan, he damns Mac-Arthur and his staff for doing the job in an inelegant and overly thorough manner. Ibid., pp. 980–1010.

15 New York Times, July 4, 1964. This report is summarized and also made the subject of a lengthy editorial in the Japan Times Weekly, Vol. 4, No. 28, International ed., July 11, 1964.

16 Takayanagi, Japan Times, March 16, 1959.

17 Personal letter from Professor Takayanagi to the writer, December 8, 1964. He opposes those in Japan who have “the idea that since the new Japanese Constitution was one imposed by force on the Japanese, it might be thrown overboard whatever its contents, and that they ought to write the Constitution anew themselves. This smacks of a political strategy of accelerating revision by stimulating nationalist (or xenophobic) sentiment. I do not approve of the strategy.” Ibid. On this point the late Kazuo Kawai wrote: “The reactionaries … obviously want to discredit the present constitution in order to make way for a return to the past.” Kawai, Kazuo, Japan's American Interlude (Chicago, 1960), p. 69Google Scholar. “Significantly enough,” writes Edwin O. Reischauer, “the charge of foreign origin has been repeatedly leveled … by those who wished to see it changed.” Reischauer, Edwin O., The United States and Japan, rev. ed. (New York, 1957), p. 254Google Scholar. According to Quigley, the old Liberal Party, as of 1954, “would come close to restoring the Meiji Constitution.” Quigley, p. 145.

18 SWNCC 228.

19 Ibid. Italics added.

20 Ibid.

21 Ibid.

22 SWNCC 228/1.

23 Ibid.

24 Ibid. Italics added.

25 The collaboration of MacArthur and Shidehara on this point is explained in McNelly, Theodore, “The Renunciation of War in the Japanese Constitution,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 77 (09 1962), pp. 350–78CrossRefGoogle Scholar. According to MacArthur himself: “… I knew that it was exactly what the Allies wanted at that time for Japan. They had said so at Potsdam and they had said so afterwards….” Mac-Arthur, Douglas, Reminiscences (New York, 1964), p. 304Google Scholar.

26 Grew, Joseph C., Turbulent Era. A Diplomatic Record of Forty Years, 2 vols. (Boston, 1952), II, ch. 36Google Scholar. In this chapter Grew writes: “If it had not been for [Secretary of War Henry L.] Stimson's wholehearted initiative, the Potsdam Conference would have ended without any proclamation to Japan being issued at all. But even Mr. Stimson was unable to have included in the proclamation a categorical understanding that unconditional surrender would not mean the elimination of the dynasty if the Japanese people desired its retention.” In a footnote he quotes a psychological warfare expert to the effect that “the analysts [of the Foreign Morale Analysis Division of the Office of War Information] thought that the Emperor might be turned to good use in lowering resistance if the enemy were told that the decision regarding his fate after an Allied victory would be up to the Japanese themselves.” Henry L. Stimson puts it this way: “ … Some maintained that the Emperor must go…. Others urged that the war could be ended much more cheaply by openly revising the formula of ‘unconditional surrender’ to assure the Japanese that there was no intention of removing the Emperor if it should be the desire of the Japanese people that he remain as a constitutional monarch. This latter view has been urged with particular force and skill by Joseph C. Grew….” Stimson, Henry L. and Bundy, McGeorge, On Active Service in Peace and War (New York, 1947), p. 626Google Scholar. “ … we made a clear bargain…. American lives for an emasculated monarchy.” Reischauer, p. 261.

27 Byrnes, James F., Speaking Frankly (New York, 1947), p. 218Google Scholar. The U. S. Initial Post-Surrender Policy approved by President Truman on September 6, 1945, states: “ … in the event of any differences of opinion among [the Allies], the policies of the U. S. will govern.” Jones, Borton and Pearn, op. cit., Appendix 10. The Far East subcommittee of SWNCC recommended on October 16, 1945, that the U. S. hold to its position of maintaining final authority in the control of Japan, and the President, the Secretary of State, and the Director of the Office of Far East Affairs in the State Department supported the recommendation; “but … certain of the European experts in the State Department favored additional concessions to the British and Soviet proposals.” Blakeslee, p. 13. “ … the Japanese constitution … is probably the single most important accomplishment of the occupation…. I am certain that it would never have been accomplished had the occupation been dependent on the deliberations of the Far Eastern Commission—with the Soviet power of vetol” MacArthur, p. 302.

28 Blakeslee, p. 44.

29 Ibid., p. 45.

30 Borton, note 7, p. 424. “Whatever faults may be inherent in the military character, evasive misrepresentation has never been one of them.” MacArthur, p. 287.

31 “Government Section Report to the Far Eastern Commission,” dated January 17, 1946. A copy is in the writer's personal files.

32 Ibid.

33 Ibid.

34 Whitney, Courtney, MacArthur, His Rendezvous with History (New York, 1955), p. 249Google Scholar.

35 Ibid., p. 248.

36 Sato, Tatsuo, “The Origin and Development of the Draft Constitution,” reprinted from Contemporary Japan, Vol. 24 Nos. 4–6 and 7–9 (Tokyo, 1957), p. 2Google Scholar. The Matsumoto Committee draft, according to Maki, “clearly revealed the unwillingness or, perhaps, complete inability of the Government and its leaders to respond to the challenge.” Maki, op. cit., pp. 78–79

37 Report of Government Section, SCAP, Political Reorientation of Japan, September 1945 to September 1948, 2 vols. (Washington, n. d. [1949]), I, 102Google Scholar. Cited hereafter as Political Reorientation.

38 Whitney, p. 248. Pertinent here is Government Section's Feb. 1, 1946, memorandum on “Constitutional Reform,” in Political Reorientation, II, 622–23Google Scholar.

39 MacArthur, p. 300.

40 Political Reorientation, I, 90Google Scholar.

41 MacArthur, p. 299.

42 Sato, p. 8; Political Reorientation, I, 101Google Scholar; Fearey, Robert A., The Occupation of Japan: The Second Phase, 1948–1950 (New York, 1950), p. 3Google Scholar; Haring, Douglas G., ed., Japan's Prospect (Cambridge, Mass., 1946), p. 301CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Whitney, pp. 283–84; Yoshida, pp. 134–36.

43 Takayanagi, , Japan Times, 03 16, 1959Google Scholar. MacArthur has this to say regarding the part played by the Emperor: “ … I always explained carefully the underlying reasons for occupation policy, and I found he had a more thorough grasp of the democratic concept than almost any Japanese with whom I talked …. his loyal cooperation and influence had much to do with the success of the occupation.” MacArthur, p. 288.

44 Political Reorientation, I, 101–05Google Scholar; Whitney, p. 249ff.; Wildes, Harry E., Typhoon in Tokyo: The Occupation and Its Aftermath (New York, 1954), ch. 4Google Scholar.

45 The Government Section, SCAP, “Memorandum for Record,” dated December 16, 1947, prepared by Ruth Ellerman. A copy is in the writer's personal files.

46 Ibid.

47 Ibid. Wildes wrote later: “Some of the more radical officers favored … an elective president, the initiative and referendum, social insurance, a compulsory eight-hour working day, and proportional representation; but, as this received no support outside Socialist ranks, it was dropped.” Wildes, p. 44.

48 Government Section, “Memorandum for Record.”

49 Grew, II, ch. 36.

50 Yoshida, pp. 133–37, 141–46. “ … at the time of its initial drafting … General MacArthur's headquarters did insist, with considerable vigour, on the speedy completion of the task, and made certain demands in regard to the contents of the draft. But during our subsequent negotiations with GHQ there was nothing that could properly be termed coercive or overbearing in the attitude of the Occupation authorities towards us. They listened carefully to the Japanese experts …. and in many cases accepted our proposals … they would often adopt the attitude that we were perhaps too steeped in the ways of the old Constitution …. we might at least give their suggestions a trial …. if they did not work, we could reconsider the whole question at the proper time and revise the necessary points. And they meant it.” Ibid., p. 143.

51 Ibid., pp. 135–36; Wakefield, Harold, New Paths for Japan (New York, 1948), pp. 131–32, 136–37Google Scholar; Political Reorientation, I, 101Google Scholar. “It is now … apparent that the Japanese leaders at the time saw eye to eye with SCAP, far more than we had previously believed possible ….” Burks, p. 28.

52 Yoshida, p. 145.

53 Ibid., p. 140.

54 Ibid.

55 Government Section, SCAP, “Diet Report” series. Eighty-five such reports were prepared on deliberations of the 90th Diet. Similar reports were prepared on the proceedings of subsequent Diets until the end of the occupation. The writer has copies of these reports in his personal files.

56 Government Section, “Diet Report,” No. 7, June 23, 1946.

57 McNelly, Theodore, “The Japanese Constitution: Child of the Cold War,” Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 24 (06 1959), pp. 187–89Google Scholar.

58 Government Section, “Diet Report,” No. 12, June 28, 1946.

59 Ibid., No. 37-A, July 28, 1946.

60 Ibid., No. 40-A, August 2, 1946.

61 Ibid., No. 60-A, August 31, 1946.

62 Fearey, op. cit., p. 3; Political Reorientation, II, 765Google Scholar.

63 From a study of the Commission on the Constitution's 5,000-page stenographic report on public hearings held throughout the country, “ … the richest single source of information on the thoughts and feelings of a representative group of Japanese about the state of their society under constitutional democratic government,” Maki concludes: “ … the longer the people live under a fundamental law that has yielded them desirable benefits and has revealed no basic defects … the less they will consider it in need of change ….” Maki, op. cit., pp. 206–12. When the Commission's final report was submitted to the Japanese government in early July 1964, Japan's leading English language newspaper commented in its weekly edition: “[it] cannot be said that there has been anything like a popular demand for constitutional changes….” Japan Times Weekly, July 11, 1964.

64 See the Aug. 25, 1946, memorandum by Government Section's Judge Oppler, Alfred C. on “Powers of the Diet with Regard to Constitutional Amendments under the Meiji Constitution,” in Political Reorientation, II, 662–66Google Scholar.

65 Truman, Harry S., Memoirs, Vol. One, Year of Decision (New York, 1955), p. 412Google Scholar.

66 Fearey, pp. 97–100.

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