Published on May 11, 2019.
Drawing on the front-page Sankei column, this essay points to the ambiguity, obscurity, and linguistic awkwardness of the preamble to the Constitution of Japan, and calls for a revision into plain and beautiful Japanese that anyone can understand.
While expressing respect for those who directly advocate revision of Article 9, it also argues for a reconsideration of the wording of the text itself.

2019-05-11
“Trusting in the justice and good faith of the peace-loving peoples of the world.”
Leaving aside the natural question of where exactly such peoples are when one looks around at the neighboring countries.
The following is from today’s front-page “Sankei Sho” column in the Sankei Shimbun.
It is a column that even people who are not subscribers to the Sankei Shimbun ought to read.
When I was in high school, my grandfather, who was still alive at the time, for some reason bought me a book called The Constitution of Japan as a souvenir.
It contained nothing but the articles written in large print, but since I had it, I decided to read it again carefully.
And I got stuck from the preamble onward.
Not only because of the content, but because I wondered whether it was not strange even as Japanese.
▼“Trusting in the justice and good faith of the peace-loving peoples of the world.”
Leaving aside the natural question of where such peoples are when one looks around at the neighboring countries.
In the phrase “trusting in the justice and good faith,” the particle used there would normally be the equivalent of “o,” not “ni.”
At the time, all I could do was tilt my head and wonder, “Was that how people used to say it in the old days?”
▼The reason I have brought up a story from nearly forty years ago is that I was inspired by an article posted on Facebook by Eguchi Katsuhiko, former president of PHP Institute, titled “Some Things I Felt After Rereading the Current Constitution.”
In it, Mr. Eguchi also argued that the correct wording should be, “trusting the justice and good faith,” not “trusting in the justice and good faith.”
▼Former Tokyo Governor and Akutagawa Prize-winning writer Ishihara Shintaro, as well as journalist Sakurai Yoshiko, have made the same point.
And the problem is not limited to particles and phrasing.
Such expressions in the preamble as “the lofty ideals controlling human relationships” and “the laws of political morality” are also impossible to understand on first reading in terms of what they specifically mean.
Expressions of unclear meaning appear here and there outside the preamble as well.
▼The morning edition of this paper on the 10th carried an article on the Tokyo commemorative lecture given by the winners of the 34th Sound Argument Grand Prize, Professor Emeritus Nishi Osamu of Komazawa University and Specially Appointed Professor Momochi Akira of Kokushikan University.
Having expressed my heartfelt respect and gratitude to these two men, who directly call for revision of Article 9 of the Constitution, I still dare to say the following.
▼Someday, I would like us to revise it into a Constitution written in plain and beautiful Japanese that anyone can understand, without having to ask constitutional scholars for interpretations and explanations of the text.