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Retaking Japan: The Abe Administration's Campaign to Overturn the Postwar Constitution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 March 2025

Muto Ichiyo  and
John Junkerman
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The struggle over reshaping postwar Japan entered a new phase on March 2, 2016, when Prime Minister Abe Shinzo declared at an Upper House Budget Committee hearing that he was committed to revising the constitution within his term of office, that is, by September 2018. Changing the postwar regime by fundamentally revising the present pacifist constitution has been Abe's goal since he returned to power in 2012, but for some time he had avoided clearly stating his plan, knowing that the majority of voters oppose constitutional revision.

Type
Research Article
Information
Asia-Pacific Journal , Volume 14 , Issue 13 , July 2016 , e3
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NCCreative Common License - ND
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is unaltered and is properly cited. The written permission of Cambridge University Press must be obtained for commercial re-use or in order to create a derivative work.
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 2016

References

Notes

1 In 1949, Emperor Hirohito sent a message through an aide to William Sebald, political advisor to SCAP, in which he stated his views that 1) the US military occupation of the Ryukyu Islands should continue; 2) there should be a long-term lease, with Japan retaining sovereignty; and 3) the procedures should be established by an agreement between the two countries.

2 See George R. Packard, Edwin O. Reischauer and the American Discovery of Japan (2010).

3 A similar term, “death during public duty” (kōmushi), was used in a set of questions submitted in the Diet to Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro in 2005. Asked whether the honor of Class-A war criminals had been restored, Koizumi ducked the question by responding, “The meanings of ‘honor’ and ‘restore’ are not necessarily clear, which makes it difficult to respond to this question.”

4 Hitotsumatsu Sadayoshi (Reform Party) at an Upper House session on June 9, 1952.

5 In 1905, during the Russo-Japanese War, Prime Minister Katsura Taro and Secretary of War William Taft reached this understanding to recognize each other's spheres of control. Taft later became president.