This essay sharply indicts Japan’s postwar constitutional academia, especially scholars of the University of Tokyo Faculty of Law, arguing that they built their authority within the structure of the spoils of defeat and spread constitutionally false interpretations into the judiciary and the bureaucracy.
Through Miyazawa Toshiyoshi’s “August Revolution Theory,” the Lockheed trial, and the denial of cross-examination, it questions the fundamental corruption of postwar Japanese legal scholarship and judicial practice.
2019-06-02
We must never forget that the more highly esteemed constitutional scholars are, such as those of the Faculty of Law at the University of Tokyo, the less they can be trusted, because they were the very people who received their share of the spoils enjoyed by the profiteers of defeat.

The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.
Constitutional Scholars Are Corrupted by the Spoils of Defeat.
Professors in the Faculty of Law at the University of Tokyo should have continued to say the sort of things I have been saying.
However, if they had said such things, they would have been caught by the purge order from public office.
So Professor Miyazawa Toshiyoshi of the University of Tokyo Faculty of Law advanced the “August Revolution Theory.”
The August Revolution Theory is a doctrine which holds that, by Japan’s acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration in August of Showa 20 (1945), the location of sovereignty shifted from the Emperor to the people, and that the Constitution of Japan was established by the people, who thereby became the sovereign, interpreting this shift in the location of sovereignty as a revolution in the legal sense.
The root of all evils lies in this Professor Miyazawa and his disciples.
Among them are such pathologically pacifist figures as Professor Emeritus Ashibe Nobuyoshi of the University of Tokyo and Professor Emeritus Higuchi Yoichi of the University of Tokyo.
And what is frightening is that a constitution based on lies has become the way of thinking of those who set the bar for the judicial examination and the civil service examination.
This has done the greatest harm to Japan.
In other words, lies became power.
I have personally experienced proof that many constitutional scholars are frauds.
In the trial of the Lockheed Incident, in which former Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka was the defendant, there was a commissioned examination of Cochan, Vice Chairman of Lockheed, and Clutter, former representative of its Tokyo office.
At the time, I asked Mr. Tsutsumi Gyō, who was then editor-in-chief of the magazine Shokun!, “Were they allowed to conduct cross-examination there?”
So when the editorial department of Shokun! inquired with the Tanaka office, asking, “Did you request cross-examination?”, the reply from the Tanaka office was, “We requested cross-examination, but the court rejected it.”
Article 37 of the Constitution clearly states, “In all criminal cases the accused shall enjoy the full opportunity to examine all witnesses” (underlining by Watanabe).
In other words, there is a right to cross-examination.
The court rejected that right.
A written statement that is not subjected to cross-examination has no value.
It may have been inadequate, but even that Tokyo Trial conducted cross-examinations.
I wrote in Shokun! that “Is it not absurd to reject cross-examination?”, and Mr. Tsutsumi told me, “I spoke with various prosecutors, and they said that this point was the one that hurt them the most.”
Yet in both the first and second instances, the opinion that “is it not strange not to conduct cross-examination?” was not adopted.
Only in the Supreme Court ruling handed down after Mr. Kakuei Tanaka had died was there finally language to the effect that “this trial was carried out through improper procedures.”
At long last, the Supreme Court acknowledged that it had not proceeded according to due process.
In other words, the Supreme Court admitted that “it had not been a proper trial.”
I debated this matter with Mr. Tachibana Takashi (Note 1) in Asahi Journal, but Mr. Tachibana Takashi, who was acting as the prosecution side’s mouthpiece, never attempted to answer on this point and instead evaded it and ran away from it.
Later, when I met a constitutional law professor at Keio University by the name of Mr. Kobayashi Setsu, he said something to the effect that he respected me.
I thought, I have no recollection of having done anything to deserve the respect of a professor of constitutional law, but then he said the following.
When Mr. Kobayashi was an assistant at Keio University, there was a conference of constitutional law scholars.
After the conference there was a second gathering attended by the eminent professors, and Assistant Professor Kobayashi, being at the lowest seat, listened to their conversation.
Then the eminent professors said, “As for the Kakuei Tanaka trial, what a man named Watanabe Shoichi is saying is probably correct.
But since the other party is Kakuei Tanaka, let us all remain silent.”
Listening to this, I, as an assistant, was extremely indignant, he said.
This is the level of Japan’s constitutional scholars after the defeat.
Proper constitutional scholars such as Mr. Momochi Akira and Mr. Nishi Osamu do not belong to the group that, linked to the University of Tokyo Faculty of Law, has rotted to the marrow through vested interests.
We must never forget that the more highly esteemed constitutional scholars are, such as those of the Faculty of Law at the University of Tokyo, the less they can be trusted, because they were the very people who received their share of the spoils enjoyed by the profiteers of defeat.
(Note 1) Tachibana Takashi (1940– ) was a journalist, nonfiction writer, and critic.
In Showa 49 (1974), his article “A Study of Kakuei Tanaka — His Money Network and Human Network,” published in the magazine Bungei Shunju, caused a major sensation and became the trigger for Prime Minister Tanaka’s resignation.