Reinterpretation of Reinterpretation

A basically personal project of Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, to reinterpret the Article IX of the Constitution of Japan is facing political difficulty. Not only leftists in the opposite, legislators in leading parties also began to question Abe’s reasoning of necessity of the reinterpretation. New compromise is further eroding his position. There is growing skepticisms against asserted security requirement.

The reinterpretation is for vesting the government of Japan a right to exercise collective self-defense, when a country closely related to Japan is attacked. Traditional interpretation of the Article IX, which renounced war, has been that Japan could exercise the right of self-defense when there was immediate and illegitimate invasion, when there was no appropriate measure and when it would be limited to the minimum. Collective self-defense has been recognized to exceed the level of minimum necessity, and violates the Constitution.

Challenging that legal understanding, Abe administration has brought a concept of international law. Citing the Charter of United Nations, administration staffs tried to persuade the public saying that collective self-defense right was fundamentally rendered to every nation. They argued that the right could accordingly be exercised, regardless traditional interpretation of the constitution, when security requirement existed. That meant that the right had theoretically no limitation.

Against that reasoning of reinterpretation, some legislators in leading parties cast a question: “Is the definition can be frequently changed by a contemporary political leader?” While the administration stressed that there were a lot of constitutional amendments in the world, lawmakers started acknowledging that those amendments were mostly about minor adjustments and fundamental change had been rare. They realized that Abe’s reinterpretation would be fundamental and conceptual change in the pacifist constitution.

Considering the political disadvantage, the administration embarked on limited version of collective self-defense right. New definition will be that collective self-defense right can be exercised only when the case is directly affecting Japan’s security, and its self-defense force cannot be sent to other nation’s territory of land, sea and air.

That concept is contradicting their theory that the right can unlimitedly be exercised. Moreover, if the area is limited to around Japan, such cases can be dealt with individual self-defense right, which is already allowed in traditional legal interpretation of the constitution. This reinterpretation of reinterpretation of the constitution will invite criticisms that Abe is not seeking actual security advantage, but change for his own legacy.