The neoliberal turn of constitution reform debate
Article 9, however, came under close scrutiny almost as soon as the Cold War came to an end. Less than a year after the Berlin Wall fell in November 1989, Iraq invaded Kuwait and the Gulf War broke out.
Japan received renewed pressure from the US and the western countries to take a more active part in the international security arrangement, and it responded by eventually enacting the Peacekeeping Operation (PKO) Law in 1992. At the time, Japan was at the height of the so-called Bubble Economy, and a new kind of argument for constitution revision, including the revision of Article 9, started to be advocated by the neoliberal conservatives, many of whom left the LDP, as part of their wider reform package of bureaucracy, electoral system, and regulatory frameworks.The best known of these figures was the highly influential Ichiro Ozawa, a former power broker in the LDP, who argued in his best-selling book for the revision of Article 9 by adding a third paragraph:
3. Paragraph 2 should not be interpreted as prohibiting the maintenance of a Self-Defense Force for peace-building activities; the maintenance of a United Nations reserve force for action under United Nations command when requested; and action by the United Nations reserve force under United Nations command.[90]
In fact, in relation to the focus of this paper - the unconstitutional amendment of Article 9 through a change in government interpretation rather than through the formal revision of the text of the constitution - the most important development that took place in this period, in retrospect, was a key argument that Ozawa started to advocate while he was still the chairman of the LDP, trying to navigate the controversial Japanese response to the Gulf War. As Ozawa's proposal for a formal addition to the Article 9 shows, he took the view that Article 9 (and its second paragraph more specifically) does not prohibit Japan's participation in UN-sanctioned peace-building activities, and that this could be done by either formally revising the constitution or by merely changing the government interpretation of the existing constitutional text.
This put Ozawa and his followers onto a collision course with the CLB, which consists of career bureaucrats and which has conventionally been entrusted with the provision of the official government interpretation of the constitution and laws with a certain degree of autonomy as legal experts from the political leadership of the day. Ozawa took issue and contended that the democratically elected politicians should be in charge of providing and answering for the official government interpretation of the constitution.
Similarly, Morihiro Hosokawa, who became the first non-LDP prime minister in 38 years in 1993, advocated a “new theory of constitution revision” that dismissed both the anti-revision camp and the pro-revision camp of the Cold War era as outdated, and included references to such proposals for revision as a new clause that allows for the participation of SDF in UN-led PKOs in the policy platform of the Japan New Party that he launched in 1992.[91] The document argued that “it is impossible to establish the new ideal of the state that the people seek while avoiding the debate over the constitution as a taboo” and also that “our theory of constitution revision is entirely different from the common pro-revision position that aims at pushing back the clock to prewar Japan.” In addition to the expanded role of the SDF, Hosokawa also contended that constitutional amendment was necessary for the sake of the reform of Japan's system of governance to include such items as “the establishment of the autonomy of the legislature and the reinforcement of the leadership of the cabinet,” “clarification of the different roles of the two chambers of the Parliament,” and “the expansion of the subjects of national referenda.”
Having fallen from power for the first time in 38 years, the LDP, too, further modified its position on the constitution as it crawled back to power in a previously unthinkable coalition with its erstwhile archrival Japan Socialist Party.
In a document called the “new manifesto” issued in 1995, when the LDP was supporting a Socialist prime minister, it was announced that the partywill debate with the public what a constitution suited to the new era ushering in the 21st century may look like, on the basis of such various principles as pacifism and the respect of basic human rights that are already consolidated.[92]
Some in the LDP were still fixated on the revision of Article 9 as their ultimate goal, but the trend was to attempt to push for a “forward-looking” type of discussion towards an eventual revision of the constitution.
Similarly, significant rethinking took place in the progressive camp as well. A simple refusal and opposition to the revision of the constitution (and Article 9 in particular) was seen as untenable by some liberals as their position was attacked as hypocritical and unrealistic “pacifism-in-one-country” or as “negative pacifism” as Japan faced a growing call for greater “international contribution” in the postCold War era.
Thus, Japan saw a considerable transformation in the constitutional amendment debate from the end of the Cold War, from one that pitted those who opposed the revision of Article 9 against those who held a reactionary view that Japan should make its “autonomous” constitution by revising Article 9 and remilitarizing head on, to a new period of rather less focused discussion about all kinds of possible ideas for constitutional reforms that were heavily informed by a neoliberal reformist ethos.
On the one hand, this change had the effect of popularizing and legitimizing the notion that Japan was in a need of revising the constitution to meet the challenges of the post-Cold War era. On the other hand, the vibrant debate lacked a focal point and thus lacked a sense of urgency and feasibility. This was strange and ironic. While the expectation was created that any self-respecting political leader must have an idea for constitutional amendment, in reality the prospect for any revision of the constitution was remote at best since there was no shared sense of need or urgency.
The issue became merely a symbol to flaunt the reformist credo of a politician or a party as the Japanese political system was going through a neoliberal transformation through a series of political and administrative reforms, including the introduction of the first-past-the-post system and the centralization of power in the hands of the prime minister and his staff.The centrist Kb meito, too, proposed the institution of a system of national referendum, local decentralization, and the right to a good environment as
Constitutional amendments in Japan 31 possible items for a constitution revision, and the leaders of the Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ), which replaced the Japan Socialist Party as the main opposition party over time, emphasized that the party was neither for nor against the revision of the constitution, but was in favor of a future-oriented discussion about the constitution. Reflecting the mood of the time, some of the proposals that were advocated included the direct, popular election of the prime minister, a system for the national referendum, and the introduction of the right to a good environment.
The media and public opinion also went through significant transformation. The conservative Yomiuri newspaper published its own proposals for constitution revision in 1991 and followed it up with further proposals in 2000 and 2004.[93] Yomiuri boasts the largest circulation in Japan (and indeed the world) as well as close ties with the political class, so its influence on the public opinion as well as on the political parties was not negligible.
By the mid-1990s, various opinion polls showed that those who were in favor of constitution revision outnumbered those opposed. In the liberal-leaning Asahi newspaper poll of 1997, the percentage of respondents who thought that there was a need to revise the constitution surpassed their opponents for the first time with 46% to 39%.[94] However, popular support for Article 9 remained high all this while, and in the same poll from 1997, only 20% of the respondents expressed their approval for the revision of Article 9 against 69% who opposed such a revision.
The spread of the feeling that it was about time that Japan revised its Constitution, however, was utilized to focus the debate increasingly on Article 9. In 2000, the Research Commission on the Constitution was established for the first time in the Diet. In the same year, the Nikkei newspaper, the business daily, argued in its editorial that “if the constitution was to be revised, it's now time to discuss which concrete point to amend in what way,” and thus shifted its position in favor of the constitutional amendment, including Article 9.[95]
The business sector followed suit. The Japan Association of Corporate Executives published its aggressive opinion in favor of constitution revision in 2003,[96] and Keidanren (Japan Business Federation)[97] and the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry[98] published their reports in 2005. The Keidanren
report focused on the revision of Article 9 to provide a clear constitutional basis for the Self-Defense Force and for the exercise of collective self-defense and on Article 96 to make it easier to revise the constitution. These arguments were based on the growing big-business consensus that it was imperative to liberate the SDF from the shackles of Article 9 and to strengthen the US-Japan security alliance in order for the Japanese government to provide necessary protection for the international interest of the Japanese corporations under the global economic order.
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