However, once one takes shelter behind the fraudulent assertion that the Constitution of Japan, a “Basic Law for Occupation Policy,” is a genuine constitution, everything goes wrong.
The following book is essential reading not only for every Japanese citizen but also for people throughout the world.
It is packed with facts of which those who merely subscribe to the Asahi Shimbun and watch NHK were entirely unaware… facts they were never told.
It is one of the finest books in the postwar world.
Shoichi Watanabe was from Yamagata Prefecture, which borders Miyagi Prefecture, where I was born.
The people of Yamagata must forever proclaim with pride, to Japan and the world, that they share their home prefecture with him, the greatest intellectual in postwar Japan and a true treasure of Japan.
The New Constitution Should Be Declared Invalid
How, then, should we view the legitimacy of the Constitution of Japan as asserted by scholars who defend it?
I believe the most logically consistent opinion is that of the lawyer Kikuji Minamide, probably the only constitutional scholar who did not graduate from university.
Under the Potsdam Declaration, the Emperor was made “subject to.”
An order to create a constitution followed, and even a draft was imposed.
To turn it into the new constitution, a “Constitutional Draft Committee” was established, but 99 percent of its work consisted of translating the occupation forces’ original draft.
The Japanese committee members did not draft it themselves.
Moreover, His Majesty the Emperor was under the rule of the occupation forces and was therefore in a situation of coercion.
Consequently, the Imperial Rescript accompanying the Constitution can be said to lack legitimacy.
After all, he was “subordinate to” the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers.
“I rejoice deeply that the foundation for the construction of a new Japan has been laid in accordance with the collective will of the Japanese people, and I sanction the amendment of the Imperial Constitution, following consultation with the Privy Council and the decision of the Imperial Diet pursuant to Article 73 of the Imperial Constitution, and hereby cause it to be promulgated.”
This is what the Imperial Rescript says, but it is obvious that it was not based on the collective will of the Japanese people.
Under the occupation, there was a “Press Code,” so information could not possibly leak out, much less could anyone criticize the draft constitution.
Thus, His Majesty the Emperor was made to tell a lie.
How should this situation be explained?
There is a concept called a “treaty constitution.”
The fact that Japan was under Allied occupation and that His Majesty the Emperor was subordinate to the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers means that the Japanese government itself was subordinate to the Allies.
The creation of the new constitution under these circumstances can be understood as a treaty with the occupation forces based on the Potsdam Declaration.
In other words, the Constitution of Japan is a treaty constitution, not an ordinary constitution.
More precisely, it should probably be called a Basic Law for Occupation Policy.
Because it was a treaty constitution, when the treaty ended—that is, when independence was restored—the Japanese government should have declared the Constitution of Japan invalid and declared either the enactment of a constitution arising from the exercise of sovereignty, in other words an ordinary constitution, or a return to the Meiji Constitution, while simultaneously amending the Meiji Constitution in accordance with its procedures.
Still less should it have continued indefinitely to venerate the Constitution of Japan, which it had been compelled to create on the basis of a draft prepared by the occupation forces, or proceeded to amend it.
Having experienced German occupation and the Vichy regime (Note 1), France has a rule that the constitution must not be amended when part or all of its territory is occupied.
And when de Gaulle took power, he treated everything enacted under the Vichy regime as if it had never existed.
There is now debate about amending the Constitution of Japan, but this will inevitably leave a scar later.
There is no way that future constitutional scholars will fail to notice something that even I, a layman, can see.
If a constitution created in an era without sovereignty is amended, an argument will inevitably arise later that the Japanese people, after independence, thereby conferred legitimacy on that constitution.
Of course, the contents of a newly created constitution may be the same as those of the present Constitution of Japan.
But the present constitution must first be declared invalid.
Japan has spent years debating the amendment provisions of Article 96 of the Constitution.
Even though the occupation forces created the entire document in less than ten days, the whole of Japan has spent years debating the amendment provisions alone.
It is utterly absurd.
Why is it absurd?
Because it is a sham.
It is absurd because it is logically inconsistent.
The political commentator Kenichi Takemura once said, “What is common sense in the world is nonsense in Japan, and what is common sense in Japan is nonsense in the world.”
Most foreigners nod in agreement with this.
Indeed, in the postwar era, “what is common sense in Japan is nonsense in the world,” but was this said of prewar Japan?
It was not.
Since the Meiji era, Japan had worked to bring its common sense into line with that of the world.
The Meiji Constitution also pursued that goal, so Japan’s standards from the Meiji era onward were unquestionably the world’s standards.
However, once one takes shelter behind the fraudulent assertion that the Constitution of Japan, a “Basic Law for Occupation Policy,” is a genuine constitution, everything goes wrong.
In every respect, “what is common sense in Japan is nonsense in the world” became the situation.
The Preamble to the Constitution of Japan states: “We, the Japanese people, desire perpetual peace and are deeply conscious of the lofty ideals governing human relationships, and we have resolved to preserve our security and existence, trusting in the justice and good faith of the peace-loving peoples of the world” (underlining by Watanabe).
For example, a small country may entrust its security to a large country when forming an alliance, as Monaco entrusts its security to France.
But no country is so foolish as to place its trust in other countries and entrust its very existence to them.
Even reading this passage alone, which entrusts to other countries whether the people live or die, is tantamount to saying, “This is not a constitution.”
Moreover, look at the countries around us.
The Soviet Union was a country that abducted hundreds of thousands of Japanese even after the war had ended and caused tens of thousands to die of starvation and exposure.
North Korea is a hereditary dictatorship, South Korea is a country that cannot even abide by the Treaty on Basic Relations between Japan and the Republic of Korea, and China is a country that massacred tens of millions of its own people and, moreover, invaded Tibet and the Uyghur region and continues to commit atrocities.
Even the United States is a country that disregarded the Potsdam Declaration and treated Japan as having surrendered unconditionally.
Are the Japanese people supposed to trust such countries and entrust their own security and lives to them?
There can be no such constitution.

(Note 1) The Vichy regime: The government established in the central French city of Vichy in 1940 (Showa 15), after France was defeated by Nazi Germany, with Marshal Pétain, the deputy prime minister of the preceding cabinet, as its head.
Germany exerted strong control over it, and its pro-German character led to civil conflict with the Resistance; the government disappeared in 1944 with the Allied liberation of France.
Those involved were punished.