Local Responses to Prime Minister Abe's Attack on Article Nine and the Constitution

Extract

The Abe administration's aim to further weaken the parameters of Article 9 by seeking legal grounds to engage Japan's military in collective self-defense activities sent Tokyo-based Japanese of all ages to the streets in protest this past summer. Tens of thousands of protesters gathered repeatedly in front of the National Diet Building and prime minister's residence to voice their opposition to this to demand, as emphasized by Students Emergency Action for Liberal Democracy (SEALDs), a politics based on Japan's postwar Constitution. With media focus on events that took place in the nation's capital and at the level of the state, local interests and opinion is sometimes overlooked. This article introduces translations of two opinion pieces published in two local Japanese newspapers, the Okinawa Taimusu (Okinawa Times), out of Naha, Okinawa, and the Kahoku Shinpō published in Sendai.