Now Is the Time to Bring Forth the True Value of A9A

Now Is the Time to Bring Forth the True Value of A9A

The English version of the “Article 9 Association(A9A)” Bulletin and News
This is the translated version of the Japanese edition (No.185 dated June16th, 2014). It is published by Katsuyuki Nara and Sarah Brock of the New English Teachers Association (or Shin-Eiken) (). The translations are on our own.

Uploaded on August19th, 2014 English edition No. 119

Now is the time to bring forth the true value of A9A

2000 people attend tenth anniversary lecture meeting

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On the tenth anniversary of the founding of A9A (June 10 2004), the A9A held the 10th Anniversary Lecture: “The Right to Collective Self-Defense and Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution.” 2000 people crowded into the lecture hall.

As guests and founders took the podium excitement rose, both in the audience and on stage. Everyone in the hall feels strong concern about the government reinterpretation of the Constitutional Right to Collective Self-Defense. Fresh determination was made to focus debate and action at the grassroots level.

At the pre-lecture founders’ meeting, the founders confirmed their plan to ask all 7300 A9A groups around the nation to stand up for the Constitution as one.

The opening speech, founders speeches and guest speeches are presented below in shortened form. The two founders who were unable to attend have their messages given in full. Full transcripts (Japanese) are available from the A9A Headquarters Committee.

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Opening speech

Citizens of Asian Cities Connect

Kim Young-Ho, Daejung University Professor, Korea

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Ten years ago I attended the first lecture meeting of A9A. At that time I was impressed by the enthusiasm of the participants, and I thought that Article 9 would be well protected.

The position of Japan after WWII was a complete turnaround from the prewar policy of aggression against other Asian countries. Japan’s regrets and reflections at that time resulted in the Peace constitution. Japan’s promise never again to wage wars of aggression against neighboring countries was very significant.

From the Opium War (1840s), the First Sino-Japanese War (1890s), the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05) the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937-1945), WWII, the Korean War, and the Vietnam War represent over 170 years of war. This era was finished at last, although issues remained of the effects of former colonization and defeat. Just as we are about to embark on the new Age of Asia, we are faced with a strange political situation. Why now? Why are we threatened with hearing a sound we hoped was extinguished forever, the guns of World War I?

In my view, modern Asia is rife with conflict and enemy consciousness between nation and nation. Japan labels China as the ‘enemy’ and exaggerates every move China makes, to raise Japanese people’s consciousness artificially and stabilize the current government. On the Chinese side, it is an effective strategy to ‘create an enemy’ of Japan、to suppress democratic movements with little effort and arouse nationalist feeling among the citizens. These two countries are ‘enemies’, practicing strategic interdependence in an escalating negative spiral trap.

Japan’s government is raising issues about the Right to Collective Self-Defense in a political vacuum for a reason. It is to accelerate the movement towards pro-constitutional revision. A narrow range of issues (military force, self-defense) are pressed, to diminish and obscure debate on other equally important issues. There is a great risk that citizens will be tempted to concentrate on one single issue and allow other issues to develop unnoticed until it is too late.

Citizens must discipline themselves to see military issues as only one of a large number of issues facing any country. In order to do this the voice of the citizens must become louder. For this to happen there must be healthy interaction with the citizens of other Asian countries. I propose a Citizen Peace Forum be created, to expand the philosophy of Japan’s Peace Constitution, so that all Asian countries can develop a Peace Constitution paradigm within their national needs.

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Guest speech

Article 9 Is Brand Japan

Ikeda Kayoko (Translator of German literature)

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We have been doing A9A (Article 9 Association) activities for ten years; my gratitude for being called to action and asked to participate in this organization is constant. I thank the founders who called on me then.

Much has happened in these ten years. The government changed hands; the East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami and Nuclear Disaster (3/11) happened. Now, when the Constitution is threatened with reinterpretation, and the right to collective Self-Defense is redefined, constitutional issues are being brought before the eyes of the public every day. I could not have imagined ten years ago how confused such vitally important issues would become.

First I will talk about the continuing movement to promote constitutional revision. Two years ago (2012) the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan came up with a proposal for rewriting the Constitution. The final words of this proposal were, ‘The [new] Constitution will be enacted.’ This wording showed that the LDP aimed not for a minor revision of the constitution but a complete rewrite.

However the 2012 proposal for a new constitution was a critical failure. So the LDP pulled back to another point, and proposed that article 96 of the present constitution, which requires a two-thirds majority vote for any constitutional revision, be changed to a simple majority. This move also received negative criticism, and the LDP retreated further, and now has arrived at a convoluted proposal: to revise historical government ruling party stated ‘official interpretations’ of the meaning of the Constitution.

I state with emphasis that this ‘interpretation revision’ is simply a rubberstamp of the Prime Minister’s private research group report with the approval of the governing party, and has no legal standing whatsoever. It is a series of empty statements being presented to Parliament. The Prime Minister’s group members, and the Prime Minister’s hand-picked cabinet, are railroading their private ideas and opinions through public institutions in a way that leaves us all gasping. To lay private agendas on a whole country is truly unforgivable.

The LDP proposedto change the whole constitution; then only one article because complete change proved problematic; then how the constitution is read, an extreme last resort. Retreating step by step they have made increasingly smaller goals. It is like revealing Russian matryoshkanesting dolls—I remind my listeners that this doll game is being played around constitutional revision, an issue of vital importance.

Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso said in July 2013 that “First, mass media started to make noises about Japan’s proposed reforms, and then China and South Korea followed suit. The German Weimar Constitution changed, without being noticed, to the Nazi German constitution. Why don’t we learn from their tactics?”

As a translator of German familiar with German history, I believe that Aso referred to the suppression of opinion and debate inside and outside the Weimar parliament by the Nazi party. The party then used Article 48 or the Emergency Decree Provision, to suspend habeas corpus, inviolability of residence, correspondence privacy, freedom of expression, freedom of Assembly and other civil rights. In the end the Weimar Constitution was disenabled, though technically in effect until 1945.

While Aso made his gaffes, Prime Minister Abe liaised with newspaper and television media heads in expensive restaurants, and has manipulated media opinion and placed not exactly censorship, but a degree of control on the media. Thanks to this he has been able to press forward with the official reinterpretation of the Constitution.

The Prime Minister’s private group’s report is rough and in some points inaccurate. An example is the reference to the Tanaka House of Councilors Audit Committee discussion in 1972, in which the government approved "taking necessary steps to defend the nation in order to maintain peace and security and to sustain its existence." The group says that this was a statement of recognition for the necessary use of the right to collective self-defense. However journalists point out that the government stipulated that “such measures be kept at the ‘minimum level necessary”and concluded that “exercising the right to collective self-defense is not allowed under the Constitution.”

In 1972 the Japanese government was taking a very strict look at the right to collective self-defense, and concluded it would not be used. This became fundamental national policy, and the discussion Abe’s group refers to actually pertained to careful definition of ‘defense’ with regards to individuals versus collective society.

There are ongoing debates about the birth of the Constitution but above all I desire everyone to realize that history is the true parent of the constitution. The terrible, cruel WWII brought forth the Constitution. The Japanese people rejoiced over the ‘birth’ of this ‘child.’ When we make interpretations of the meaning of the constitution, we must restore our thinking, and remember how it was when the Constitution was born.

Then there is the issue of proactive contributing pacifism. This is not just refraining from making war. It is a state in which everyone promotes human rights; that is true proactive contribution to peace. The Abe version of ‘proactive contributing pacifismmeans only that a potential opponent has not actually attacked Japan yet, but just in case we might have to get ready to hit the enemy first, and this will be the best kind of self-defense.

My last comment about Article 9 is: I feel that the Constitution is a message of apology to all the Asian countries Japan invaded and fought during the war. I bring your attention to a document drawn up shortly before the Japanese Constitution: the United Nations Charter. Section 6 article 33 states that the United Nations will not use violence in cases of conflict between nations. Japan was the first nation in the post-world-war era to take this principle and weave it into national policy, and made Article 9 into a serious, radical message of apology.

For the past 70 yearsour country has not killed one foreign person for its self-defense. For a country of such economic prosperity, to not even aim the muzzle of a gun at a citizen of a foreign country, makes our country unique. The guarantee of safety for all people is a burden which must be born in many ways by the whole world. There is no reason why everyone in the world has to carry out this duty in the same way and doing the same thing. There must be many positive things that the Self-Defense Forces can do to promote peace and the welfare of all people, besides go to war.

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Video Message

Article 9 of the Constitution asnormative legal reject

Sakata Masahiro (Former director general of the cabinet legislation bureau)

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Until this time the government has kept to the policy of not maintaining aggressive military power、and not approving military interactions with other countries which is the essence of interpretation. The self-defense forces have been allowed to exist to protect the lives and property of the citizens of the country as the least possible deterrent, an effective organization while not actually being enough to function as an actual national army. This allows the SDF to be allowed existence within the bounds of the Constitution.

However this line of logic has led the SDF to be activated for work overseas even when the lives and properties of Japanese citizens are not directly threatened. These peace-keeping activities are happening outside the strict interpretation of the right to collective self-defense.

The Right to Collective Self-Defense (in this looser interpretation) supposes that a country (A) and another country (B) are beginning to go to war, and that Japan takes a stance of alliance with one of the two conflicting countries. As an ally, Japan must participate in the other country’s war effort, and this is the only reason to send the Japanese SDF overseas. This means that if Japan allies with country A, then sending the SDF overseas means protecting the interests of A, and if Japan is allies with country B then its forces are protecting the interests of country B. This can only be seen as the defense of another country without any incursion on the interests or property of Japan.

War is defined in international law as basically an illegal act; therefore since about the 19th century, countries have come up with ideas such as ‘national defense’ and the ‘right to collective self-defense of individual nations’ to justify acts of war. This is quite a new concept, a new interpretation of a basic natural right to defend oneself. While it seems so new and natural, it is not interpreted internationally as a ‘right’.

As a term, if we examine it closely, the Right to Collective Self-Defense seems to mean a small, weak country allying with other small, weak countries, which use their combined power to resist a larger country. This is what the concept seems to sound like on first hearing, but on the contrary, after WWII examples of the exercise of the Right to Collective Self-Defense are without exception a large and powerful country (America, the Soviet Union) justifying its invasion or attack on another country.

Though the Abe Cabinet speaks of ‘merely’ changing the interpretation of Article 9 of the Japanese constitution, as I have just been saying, the actual use of the Right to Collective Self-Defense in the sense of international law and custom means, in truth, that Japan must in fact be considered as and function as a country which can, if it wishes, go to war. This interpretation does not depend on the existence or non-existence of Article 9, and negates its meaning as a constitutional document. I state here and now that this is completely contrary to the will and expectations of the people of this country, who have been brought up to believe in Japan as a pacifist, peaceful country.

Politicians have a mandate from the people to carry out any necessary constitutional revision using correct procedures, openly, explaining the need for revision in concrete terms to the citizens of this country. What this country needs, what we cannot do without, is correct procedure of law, not some back-door entry and so-called ‘re-interpretation’ of the Constitution. This violates the origins and meaning of the Constitution and constitutes and unforgivable violence against Constitutional law.

This issue will only be resolved by a complete forum of debate with the involvement of all citizens. I urge all citizens to gather in groups large and small, and realize through discussion what the government is contemplating, and make their feelings and objections known. We the people have to feel our essential connection with this issue, and keep it under observation.

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Founder’s Speech 1

There is much to do if we work together

Oe Kenzaburo (novelist)

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I have been used to introducing myself as ‘Oe Kenzaburo, novelist.’But as of last fall I have ceased to identify with writing novels. I can no longer say to people, when they ask, what novels I am writing. I have examined myself and come to the conclusion: I am now Oe Kenzaburo of the Article 9 Association.

The idea of this association A9A, which is now celebrating its tenth year of activity, was first explained to me by Kato Shuichi. He had the inspiration to start a society to protect the 9th article of the Japanese constitution, and he asked that I become not just a member, but one of the founding members. Kato was 85 at the time.

Prime Minister Abe now desires more than anything to break what he calls the ‘disgusting’ regime of Postwar Japan. The man who created and promoted the group which supports this regime and its core concepts is Kato Shuichi. The honor I felt when Kato asked me to become a founding member allowed me to instantly commit myself.

To continue: Prime Minister Abe began by saying he would accomplish revision of article 96 [to change the 2/3 majority for constitutional change to a simple majority], but he pulled back sharply when critical voices were raised. His reaction was to get his group of like-minded researchers to outline proposals [to revise constitutional interpretation], rubber-stamp the results through his cabinet, and get them approved in the diet using diet procedural rules.

We have been watching with deep unease as the present and previous elections resulted in a majority for the ruling party, which now carries the risk of allowing the Right to Collective Self Defense re-interpretation to be forced through the diet and become law. If this happens, and a crisis occurs in which the government decides to exercise this right, Japanese people or troops will be attached to American military and be forced to fight in Asia or some other part of the world. They will be forced to make war, to kill people, and be killed. If this does come about, the politicians and Prime Minister Abe will not regret, reflect, or search their conscience about their activation of the Right to Collective Self-Defense. Instead they will be proud, and claim that the exercise of this right and the deaths that resulted were part of Japan’s international responsibility. The Right to Collective Self-Defense will become immovably lodged within this country. What Abe calls the ‘disgusting postwar regime’ will be brought to an end。