In the first place, the text of the current Constitution is nothing more than a hastily translated text in two days and two nights
Before that, “you cannot defend your country with guerrilla warfare by a militia,” “it is impossible to carry out Gandhian non-violent disobedience,” and
June 9, 2018
The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
This chapter is a must-read for all Japanese citizens, especially Niigata Prefecture residents.
Constitutionalism – the current Constitution is not a law
The existence of the Self-Defense Forces, a force capable of engaging in combat, is without question a violation of Article 9, Paragraph 2 of the current Constitution (which states that Japan will not maintain armed forces or engage in war).
A nation that affirms the existence of the SDF by 93% but opposes the amendment of that article by 70% is either schizophrenic or suffering from dementia.
At the very least, it is tainted by the bad habit of unthinkingness.
The dusty term “constitutionalism” has been taken out of the old warehouse of Meiji and Taisho-era dictionaries (to prevent the deployment of the Self-Defense Forces overseas).
However, not only is there no attitude of “let’s make a good constitution” by considering “bad laws are not laws,” but the chorus of constitutionalism that says “let’s cling to a bad constitution” is not something that can be heard.
First, even if there is no need to go into trouble with revising the Constitution, it is possible to reinterpret the existing Constitution (rooted in the traditional spirit of Japan) based on common sense.
If more is needed, it is possible to ignore such a document as a dead letter or discard it as worthless.
In the first place, the text of the current Constitution is nothing more than a hastily translated text in two days and two nights that was written by people with only a certain level of ability (young military officers with no knowledge of the public law of the US military) at a particular time (the early days of the US military occupation of Japan, when the smoke had not yet cleared) under certain circumstances (making Japan a vassal state of America) and driven by a specific intention (the dream of realizing a demilitarized world), in a certain period (about six days) and by people with a particular ideology (the soft socialism of New Dealers).
To revere such a thing as an unblemished great work is nothing more than a pathological fetishism (worship of material objects) for the printed word.
Defending the Self-Defense Forces is also a mistake by reasoning that “sovereign nations have the natural right to self-defense.”
Before that, it is impossible to justify the existence of a government army called the Self-Defense Forces unless we consider that “a country cannot defend itself in a guerrilla war with a militia,” “it is impossible to carry out Gandhian-style non-violent disobedience,” and “it is a disgrace for a country to willingly give up its national sovereignty and become a protectorate of another country.”
Moreover, the phrase “to achieve the purpose of the preceding paragraph (prohibition of aggression)” in Article 9, Paragraph 2 is a laughable sentence.
The phrase “unarmed and non-aggressive to avoid aggression” can only mean one of the following two things (or both).
Either “the Japanese are so stupid that they can’t tell the difference between invasion and self-defense” or “the Japanese are so barbaric that they will use the excuse of self-defense to invade.”
Even if it is true, even if it is valid from a hundred steps back, it is not only a disgrace to the Japanese people to state such things clearly and display them at the front entrance of the nation, but it is also a nuisance to the international community.
Of course, we have to admit that it is difficult to distinguish between self-defense and aggression.
However, as the recent self-critical report in the UK (regarding the US-UK invasion of Iraq) shows, “if you look carefully, it is possible to distinguish between aggression and self-defense.”
If we cannot do this, the world will become a mere “jungle of the law of the jungle.”
It would mean that international relations would lose their “sociality,” and the international community would disappear.
We should return to the common sense of the Constitution, which states that “aggression is not allowed, but self-defense is fine” and that whether or not “overseas deployment of troops” for self-defense is necessary depends on the international situation.
This article continues.
2022/6/28 in Kyoto