Journalist Masayuki Takayama argues that Japan’s postwar Constitution—drafted in one week by GHQ officials—was never legitimate and was upheld only through fear of purges and academic compliance.
The “August Revolution Theory,” invented by Shunji Miyazawa to avoid being purged, provided retroactive justification for a Constitution imposed without legal procedure.
This theory became the foundation of postwar constitutional studies at the University of Tokyo, shaping interpretations on issues such as same-sex marriage and Japan’s right of self-defense.
Takayama contends that the Constitution was crafted for American purposes, not Japan’s—thus Japan should abandon it entirely, not merely reinterpret it.

The Sapporo High Court recently ruled unconstitutional the Civil Code provision that does not recognize marriage between same-sex couples in a lawsuit filed by plaintiffs who claimed it violated the Constitution.
In other words, according to the court, the term “both sexes” in Article 24 of the Constitution, which states that marriage shall be based on “the mutual consent of both sexes,” includes female–female and male–male couples.
Therefore, the Civil Code that stipulates “a man and a woman” is unconstitutional, says Presiding Judge Kiyofumi Saito.

One wants to ask him whether he can even read Japanese.
With this ruling, six out of seven court decisions involving same-sex marriage now argue that the Constitution recognizes same-sex marriage and that it is the Civil Code that stands in the way.

On the same day, the Tokyo District Court issued a ruling with similar reasoning, where Presiding Judge Tomoyuki Tobisawa invoked the currently fashionable concept of gender identity and stated calmly that “traditional values have changed.”
Thus, he argued, the Civil Code should recognize marriage between people of the same sex.

However, courts are supposed to interpret existing laws according to their wording, and arbitrary interpretations have long been prohibited.
The same is true for the text of the Constitution: “both sexes” clearly means a man and a woman.
If there is any deeper meaning, it should fundamentally be determined by the legislative purpose behind the provision.

As is well known, the Constitution of Japan originated from the English draft written in one week by Charles Kades of the Government Section (GS) of GHQ and his subordinates, which was then translated into Japanese and printed vertically.
The portion around Article 24 was likely written by Beate Sirota, a young and ignorant Jewish college student.

In the Jewish faith she adhered to, homosexuality was regarded with abhorrence as sodomy.
Kades, who edited her draft, was an average American military officer, and homosexuality had long been a despised and loathed subject.

In the film From Here to Eternity, set on the eve of Pearl Harbor, homosexuals are depicted as so detested that they are even killed.
The U.S. Army and Navy accepted homosexual recruits only half a century later, during the Clinton administration, under the rule that “the military does not ask whether a recruit is homosexual, and recruits do not volunteer the information.”

Therefore, the Constitution created by GHQ never contemplated marriage between people of the same sex.

One might argue that that is an American issue, and that Japan’s Constitution has since taken root in Japan and should be interpreted in a Japanese manner.
That is also wrong.

GHQ insisted that the Constitution of Japan was an amendment to the Meiji Constitution, and Shunji Miyazawa, Dean of the University of Tokyo Faculty of Law, agreed.
However, the Meiji Constitution stipulates that only the Emperor, who holds sovereignty, may initiate constitutional amendments.
Yet the new Constitution was initiated by MacArthur.

Furthermore, sovereignty had somehow shifted from “the Emperor” to “the people,” and it was claimed that representatives of the sovereign people—Diet members—deliberated and approved the new Constitution.

MacArthur suppressed the Japanese through every undemocratic measure available, including censorship and press bans, and even through fear of purges (public office disqualification).
However, if he went so far as to alter Japan’s constitution illegally, the Japanese would not remain silent.

At that moment, Miyazawa declared: “With the acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration, an invisible revolution occurred, and sovereignty shifted to the people.”
This is the so-called “August Revolution Theory.”

He announced this on May 6, 1946, nine months after the acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration.
It was around the time the Japanese translation of the MacArthur draft had been completed.

Why did Shunji Miyazawa remain silent for nine months?
The clue lies in the purge list MacArthur issued four months earlier, in January 1946.
It targeted military officers, supporters of ultranationalism, members of the Imperial Rule Assistance Association, and others, totaling seven categories.
Altogether, 200,000 people were purged.

A dean of the University of Tokyo Faculty of Law—who had defended the Meiji Constitution with its “divine Emperor”—should have been among the first to be purged.
Miyazawa thought:
MacArthur’s Constitution violated lawful procedures and constituted a gross infringement of sovereignty.
But if I, as Dean of the University of Tokyo Faculty of Law, craft a sophistry that grants it legitimacy, I may escape the purge.

After two months of contemplation, he conceived the idea of this “revolution that occurred without anyone noticing.”
For something improvised, it was quite clever.
MacArthur danced with joy when the August Revolution Theory appeared.
He knew the Japanese disliked crookedness but would accept something if an authority figure from the University of Tokyo stated it solemnly.

As a reward, MacArthur made Shunji Miyazawa a member of the House of Peers.
Thus Miyazawa not only escaped the terror of the purge but became a postwar beneficiary.

Since then, the University of Tokyo Faculty of Law—the core of Japanese constitutional scholarship—has adhered rigidly to the August Revolution Theory.
Miyazawa’s direct disciple, Nobuyuki Ashibe, studied at Harvard University and went so far as to say,
“The constitutional framework MacArthur gave us is found in the U.S. Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution,”
and made this the foundation of postwar Japanese constitutional studies.

There is evidence that this is no joke.

If you open the section on the Constitution of Japan in all editions of the Roppo Zensho (Six Codes), beginning with those published by Yuhikaku, the first page always contains the “Declaration of Independence.”
The Declaration was already included in the 1948 edition of the Six Codes, and it was in the volume I used in university as well.
I remember thinking how odd it was to find such a peculiar preface in such a place.
The current edition surely contains the same.

It tells Japanese readers that, in interpreting the Japanese Constitution, they must first return to the Declaration of Independence and read the Constitution with an American sensibility.
Same-sex marriage could never be permitted under such a framework.

Yasuo Hasebe, Ashibe’s successor, also categorically denies Japan’s right of self-defense—precisely because Americans dislike it.
Japan’s Constitution exists for the sake of Americans.
What we must do is not interpret the Constitution—
but abandon it.