Defendant Prime Minister

Plaintiffs accused incumbent Prime Minister as totally unconstitutional. In the first oral pleadings on the case for suspension of visit to Yasukuni Shrine by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe last December, families of war victims straightly criticized political activities of the nationalist leader. Abe’s representative rebuffed that the visit of Yasukuni did not violate the constitutional provision for separating politics from religion. With this denial of reconciliation, the court will have to decide whether the Premier violated the Constitution.

Abe’s Yasukuni visit invited strong opposition from China and South Korea, which had suffered from Japan’s aggression in World War II. His visit also frustrated families of war victims in Japan, who deeply regretted the war itself and hoped eternal peace. After four months from the visit, two hundred seventy-three families indicted Abe requiring confirmation of unconstitutionality of the visit and halting future visit to Tokyo Regional Court.

One of the plaintiffs, Chieko Seki, a woman high-school student in Nagasaki at the time of atomic bomb was dropped and lost most of her classmates, stated that “Everything the Prime Minister is doing, including Designated Secrecy Law or unleashing exercise of collective self-defense right, is violating basic principle of the Constitution of Japan.” For war victim families like Seki, intervention of democratic values the Japanese people had achieved in post-war era or intimidation to neighbor nations by upholding wartime principle are nothing but betrayals.

The representative of Abe required withdrawal of the accusation, claiming that “Freedom of religion of the plaintiffs was not violated by Prime Minister’s visit to Yasukuni. The visit was done as private person, not the Prime Minister.” Abe does not publicly mention the case. But he always explains his Yasukuni visit as “It is natural that a political leader gives a sincere condolence to the victims for the nation. For him, it might also be natural for a prime minister to harm sentiments of his fellow citizens by carelessly reaching mass destruction again by preparing for war, looking only at his own narrow-minded conservative political agenda.

Five hundred forty-six people also made the same kind of lawsuit to Osaka Regional Court in April. In addition, two hundred twenty-two people of Taiwan and Okinawa followed the first indictment in Osaka this month, accusing Abe’s visit to Yasukuni. It is likely that the lawsuit will go to the Supreme Court, which is supposed to be the only court deciding interpretation of the Constitution. Judges will be caught between legal consistency and legitimacy of political activity.