If we can read a nation’s constitution as indicative of its cultural and political identity, it may be the case that Japan is beginning to rearticulate its identity. There is a great amount of ambiguity and uncertainty in the debate, but the Japanese are now asking the question: Do we revise our pacifist Constitution?

Particularly since the first Gulf War, the Japanese have been accused of bankroll diplomacy; Japan shelled out 1.3 trillion yen, or approximately 11.8 billion U.S. dollars, to support the U.S.-led war against Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait, but did not contribute any troops. This approach of funding, coupled with withholding all personnel, caused some members of the international community to accuse the Japanese of a nasty, cowardly, let’s-not-get-our-hands-dirty approach to international conflict.

The Japanese, however, were legally unable to contribute any forces. The Japanese Constitution — implemented in 1947, essentially written by the United States, and unaltered since its introduction — includes Article 9, which strictly prohibits Japan from having a military force.  The Self Defense Forces, or SDF, exist, but they are not deployed overseas. It is only due to a recent law, enacted in the summer of 2003, that Japanese troops are legally able to enter non-combat zones Iraq, although arguably no such areas currently exist in the war-torn nation.  

The Asahi Shimbun reported on May 1 that in a survey of 1,945 people conducted in April of 2004, 53 percent of respondents favored a revised Constitution. This year is the first time, since The Asahi Shimbun began taking a survey on the subject in 1995, that a majority of respondents have supported a revised Constitution.

A survey in the Yomiuri Shimbun, the most widely circulated Japanese daily newspaper, indicated that 65 percent of the 1,823 individuals surveyed supported a revised Constitution. But one important caveat, however, is that only 44 percent of the respondents wanted to change Article 9 — the portion of the Constitution that bars Japan from possessing a military force.  

The Japanese citizens will ultimately decide whether this fluctuating national sentiment translates into legislative change; a revision of the Constitution must first be supported by a majority of the public, and it must then be endorsed by a two-third majority of the Upper and Lower houses. Among the relevant questions to be answered is whether the increasing support of a Constitutional revision reflects a truly Japanese and truly radical reconsideration of its national character and its role in the international arena, or whether this is a temporary blip in the national consciousness caused by American bullying.

Mimi Hanaoka