ASIA : Advocates of Constitutional Change Gain Support in Japan

Over the last four decades, to advocate revising Japan’s so-called “peace constitution” was a taboo subject for most Japanese. The silence was steadfastly observed by mainstream politicians and journalists and was reinforced by public fears that any revision could lead to Japan once again becoming a military giant.

Now, suddenly, the taboo is gone. Proponents of change have sprung up within both the ruling Liberal Democratic Party and the opposition. Even among the mass media, once monolithic in avoiding the subject, a powerful voice for revision has emerged.

As an editor of the Yomiuri newspaper put it, “No longer is it possible to win an argument by merely insisting on protecting the constitution.”

With a two-thirds vote of Parliament needed to revise the constitution, no one sees action in the foreseeable future. Moreover, in Japan, nothing ever happens without a lot of talk preceding it.

Nonetheless, the debate has become so widespread that Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa was forced Jan. 28 to order members of his Cabinet to keep their mouths shut about revising the basic charter.

“Constitutional revision is not on the political calender,” declared his chief Cabinet secretary, Yohei Kono.

The gag order was aimed principally at Foreign Minister Michio Watanabe, who is regarded as the leading candidate to succeed Miyazawa. He believes that Japan has no hope of winning a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council if it cannot dispatch troops to U.N. peacekeeping operations that require the use of force.

Article 9 of the constitution, which forbids the maintenance of armed forces and the use of force to solve international disputes, remains at the core of the new debate. But now, both conservatives and liberals are focusing on a whole series of faults they see in the charter, which was put into effect in 1947 under the post-World War II American occupation.

Former Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone has attracted widespread attention by urging a revision that would empower voters--instead of Parliament--to elect the prime minister. That is the best way to uproot corruption, he insists.

Another aspirant to the prime minister’s post, Hiroshi Mitsuzuka, chairman of the ruling party’s policy board, has noted that Article 89 forbids use of public funds for any “educational enterprise not under public control,” despite a longstanding practice of national government subsidies to private schools. An amendment should eliminate the constitutional infraction, he insists.

Morihiro Hosokawa, a former prefectural (state) governor whose band of reformists made a small but notable splash in last summer’s upper house election, wants a revision to give local governments more power over the domineering central administration in Tokyo.

He also has urged that voters be allowed to cast ballots in national referendums to determine action on major issues--such as an opening of Japan’s rice market.

Other proposals include adding environmental protection, strengthening Parliament, spelling out the rights and duties of political parties and establishing an independent constitutional court to hand down rulings on constitutionality that are rarely made by the present Supreme Court.

Both the middle-of-the-road Democratic Socialist Party and the Buddhist-backed Komei (Clean Government) Party have declared themselves ready to consider revisions. And even the Marxist-imbued Socialists’ new leader, Sadao Yamahana, has called for an ill-defined “creative development” of the constitution.

Never before have any of the opposition parties pronounced themselves ready for constitutional debate. Until now, only right-wing ruling party politicians have issued calls--largely ignored--to rid the constitution of its “American flavor.”

A year ago, Yomiuri set up a blue-ribbon Constitutional Problems Investigation Committee of outside experts. And last Dec. 9, the committee issued the first in a series of reports. Its verdict: Revisions should be carried out.