Published on October 13, 2019.
Based on an essay by international political scholar Shinoda Hideaki published in WiLL, this article examines the “Galápagos constitutional theory” seen among University of Tokyo–affiliated constitutional scholars such as Miyazawa Toshiyoshi, Hasebe Yasuo, Ishikawa Kenji, and Kimura Sota.
It criticizes the anti-American, anti-Abe, and ideologically driven constitutional interpretations surrounding issues such as SDF deployment to the Strait of Hormuz, security legislation, and the right of collective self-defense.

October 13, 2019.
Miyazawa Toshiyoshi, Hasebe Yasuo, Ishikawa Kenji, Kimura Sota…
Why are University of Tokyo Law Faculty–affiliated professors so deeply dyed in a special ideology?
Constitutional scholars intoxicated by ideology.
The following is an essay by Shinoda Hideaki, an international political scholar, published in the monthly magazine WiLL under the title: Constitutional Scholars Infected by the Galápagos Constitution.
Simply by reading this essay, readers who subscribe to the Asahi Shimbun, Mainichi Shimbun, Tokyo Shimbun, Chunichi Shimbun, or local newspapers that merely publish articles distributed by Kyodo News will keenly feel that they must immediately stop subscribing to those newspapers and pay 916 yen to subscribe to the monthly magazine WiLL and others.
Miyazawa Toshiyoshi, Hasebe Yasuo, Ishikawa Kenji, Kimura Sota…
Why are University of Tokyo Law Faculty–affiliated professors so deeply dyed in a special ideology?
Constitutional scholars intoxicated by ideology.
―Japan has been called on by the United States to participate in a “coalition of the willing.”
More than seventy years have passed since the war, yet there still exist, to a certain degree, constitutional scholars who are content with what Professor Shinoda points out in The Disease of Constitutional Scholarship, published by Shincho Shinsho, as “Galápagos constitutional theory.”
Shinoda.
The dispatch of the Self-Defense Forces to the Strait of Hormuz is one policy issue, so it should be discussed as such.
Legal revisions can simply be made as necessary, but regarding the timing, or how to maintain distance from the framework of the coalition of the willing, there are various policy options, and policy discussion is necessary.
However, what must not happen is to bring it into constitutional theory and debate whether the dispatch is permissible or not.
To begin with, one cannot say that the Constitution prohibits the dispatch of the Self-Defense Forces to the Strait of Hormuz.
We must prevent, by every possible means, policy debate from being forcibly distorted by a misinterpretation of the Constitution by particular social forces.
I call the culture of a particular social group that advocates constitutional interpretation according to a unique ideological orientation, through a logical structure that works only in Japan, “Galápagos constitutional theory.”
What supports this “Galápagos constitutional theory” is not precise constitutional interpretation.
It is merely vague abstraction, such as “preventing the revival of militarism,” “constitutionalism means limiting power,” or “the Abe administration is going down a path we have seen before,” or else “political comic talk” with ideology fully exposed.
What supports its status is not the precision of constitutional interpretation, but a network of social groups connected by ideology.
The distortion of Galápagos constitutional theory.
Incidentally, in 1993, I participated in a United Nations PKO in Cambodia as an election support officer under the PKO Act.
At that time, I was fed up with the fact that the Japanese mass media had no interest other than asking things like, “Do you not think the Self-Defense Forces are unconstitutional?”
Even then, I could not help but be strongly aware that behind this lay a strange ideological tendency in Japanese constitutional scholarship.
Even after becoming a researcher, because my specialty was the policy field of peacebuilding, I continued to feel great dissatisfaction with the atmosphere within Japan, which could only understand contributions to international peace as a constitutional issue.
However, when I was young, I did not discuss Japan, but built a record of research on my specialty, international peace operations.
But while watching the uproar over the security legislation from around 2014, I felt old memories coming back to me.
At the same time, I had already reached my mid-forties, and I thought it would be all right to make somewhat more direct statements.
Thus I deliberately came to feel that I would undertake the task of thoroughly criticizing the distortions of “Galápagos constitutional theory” in earnest, and published A History of Thought on the Right of Collective Self-Defense, Fukosha, 2016, The True Constitution, Chikuma Shinsho, 2017, and this year, The Disease of Constitutional Scholarship.
The disease of University of Tokyo Law Faculty–affiliated professors.
―As constitutional scholars who embody the distortions of “Galápagos constitutional scholarship,” you take up University of Tokyo Law Faculty–affiliated professors such as Miyazawa Toshiyoshi, Hasebe Yasuo, Ishikawa Kenji, and Kimura Sota.
Shinoda.
The feature commonly seen among these constitutional scholars is that they make “anti-Americanism” the foundation for the correctness of their own arguments.
They appeal to people who think that unless constitutional scholarship is accepted, Japan will become a vassal state of America, and they maintain their popularity among people for whom anti-Americanism is the standard of value judgment.
Now, let us look individually at the characteristics of the four.
・Miyazawa Toshiyoshi―During the Pacific War, Professor Miyazawa argued that Japan should challenge the international order led by Britain and America, and praised the Pacific War.
After the war, he argued that there was no problem with keeping the Constitution of the Empire of Japan as it was.
When he learned that the new Constitution had been drafted by GHQ, he deliberately advocated the “August Revolution” theory, according to which the Japanese people had carried out a revolution and seized sovereignty at the time of accepting the Potsdam Declaration, thereby erasing the shadow of America from the Constitution.
By doing so, he created the ideological foundation for making constitutional interpretations not intended by the drafters into the academic orthodoxy.
・Hasebe Yasuo―Professor Hasebe thought that, in the world after the end of the Cold War, the prevailing constitutional theory that continued to regard the Self-Defense Forces as unconstitutional could not hold.
He therefore developed the bold argument that the Self-Defense Forces are constitutional by virtue of “common sense.”
However, for him, this was no more than a minor adjustment to protect constitutional scholarship.
In the debates over the security legislation and the current debate on constitutional revision, he has developed discourse that, as a representative of constitutional scholars, loudly raises the banners of anti-Abe and anti-Americanism.
・Ishikawa Kenji―At the time of the security legislation, Professor Ishikawa widely engaged in discourse that brought “anti-Abe and anti-Americanism” to the forefront through political slogan-like statements such as “This is a coup d’état” and “The right of collective self-defense is a foreign body.”
It was rumored that he wanted to express loyalty to his master Higuchi Yoichi, but his academic interests are biased toward the philosophical side, and the scholarly basis for his political discourse cannot be analyzed from his research achievements.
・Kimura Sota―Professor Kimura is a person who plays the role of an advertising tower for constitutional scholars through the mass media and SNS, but he tends to be self-conscious to an excessive degree and to have excessive interest only in issuing declarations that “I have won the debate,” while ignoring logical precision.
Because he loudly asserted that the right of collective self-defense was unconstitutional at the time of the security legislation, one can still see him struggling to clean up the consequences.
For example, his attitude is symbolized by the way he bases himself on meaningless claims such as that because the Constitution of Japan contains no provision for “military power,” Japan cannot exercise “military power,” even though the constitutions of other countries do not contain provisions for something called “military power” either, and from there derives conclusions that leap logically one after another.
Professor Inoue Tatsuo, a legal philosopher, and others strongly criticize Professor Kimura, and other constitutional scholars also seem to have begun distancing themselves from him.
This article continues.