Why It’s Unconstitutional

Special Committee for Security Legislation in the House of Councillors passed new security bills on Thursday, which had been criticized as unconstitutional, during lawmakers of the leading and opposite parties were colliding around chairman’s desk like uncontrollable mob. The bills were submitted to plenary session of the House and waiting for final votes as early as today. People kept on chanting that the bills were unconstitutional around the Diet building.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reiterated that the bills were not unconstitutional because limited exercise of collective self-defense would be staying within a conceptual framework of past interpretations of the Constitution of Japan. He raised an official opinion of the government in 1972, which the Cabinet led by Kakuei Tanaka submitted to the Diet.

The 1972 opinion recognized that Japan could exercise necessary and minimum military power for protecting people’s rights, when Japan was offended. It also determined that Japan can exercise individual self-defense right even under Article 9 of the Constitution. But, the opinion concluded that Japan could not exercise collective self-defense right to protect foreign country that was attacked.

Raising the 1972 opinion, Abe Cabinet decided new interpretation that the Constitution allowed limited exercise of collective self-defense when obvious danger of threatening existence of state and undermining people’s right was reaching. But, three professors on constitution study opposed that new interpretation in a testimony in June. They argued that interpretation by Abe Cabinet did not cope with conclusion of the 1972 opinion and undermine legal stability of the Constitution of Japan.

Once new interpretation was denied by experts, Abe administration brought plan B to discussion in the Diet. It was a judgment of the Supreme Court in 1959, called decision in Sunagawa Incident, which allowed Japanese government to take necessary measures for protecting the country. However, a former judge of the Supreme Court firmly opposed to the interpretation. “It is fundamentally hard to recognize that the Supreme Court at that moment noticed collective self-defense force,” told former Judge, Shigeru Yamaguchi.

That was all of what Abe administration raised as causes for exercising collective self-defense. It made no further explanation why their reinterpretation was constitutional. After all, Abe is going forward with no informed consent from the public to a way that Japan abolishes its fundamental concept for a peaceful nation.