Effort to Include Young Agers

What would be the first thing for whom reached adult age? One of the most symbolic deeds for an adult in Japan is having alcoholic drinks. How about participating in politics? No. Young people are not so interested in it. That is the point.

The leading parties, Liberal Democrats and New Komeito, and the biggest opposite party, Democratic Party of Japan, agreed with lowering the age for voting in national referendum from twenty to eighteen. To implement the reform, they reconfirmed that voters for elections should in general be changed from twenty to eighteen within two years after the Constitution Amendment Process Act will be activated. That could be a significant step to lowering “age of adult” prescribed in Civil Law.

The reform is not unique in the world. Germany and United Kingdom lowered the age of adult from twenty-one to eighteen four decades ago. It is also eighteen in most states in the United States, but the most of them prohibit alcoholic drink for the age of twenty or the lower. The reason why lowering the age of adult may vary. Some countries do it for increasing military personnel, while others want to let grow their population by admitting young marriages.

The move in Japan is basically for lowering hurdle for amending the constitution. When legislators passed the Constitution Amendment Process Act in 2007, they realized that the voters should be as wide as possible to reflect utmost public opinions. To make it happen, difference of adult age between the act and Civil Law was recognized to be eliminated. In short, they thought that the age of adult needed to be lowered for constitutional amendment.

Constitutional reformers are thinking that participation of young agers will make the amendment easy, because protestors are mainly in old age. While older people believe that peaceful Japan was maintained by peaceful constitution in post-war era, young agers think that current regime preferable to old agers was brought by political structure based on current constitution. For young people, the constitution is getting to be a symbol of old regime. They look very easy to manipulate. The reformers are simply taking advantage of it.

Liberal Democrats, New Komeito and Democrats are widening the wing to other opposition parties, such as Restoration Party or Your Party, to pass the bill in current session of the Diet. That can be an effort to restrain Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe, from exerting too strong leadership in the issue of the constitution, in which he tries to reinterpret the Article IX to exercise collective self-defense right.