Opinion Martial law, Japanese-style By Douglas Lummis	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
日本式戒厳令 小泉内閣は非常に頭がいい。 平和憲法の改正には手を付けずに 非常時には戦争ができるような仕組みを うまく考え出したのだから。

The Koizumi government is pretty darn clever. It seems they have come up with a solution to a problem that the Liberal Democratic Party has struggled with since its founding: how to get around the Constitution's Article 9 and make Japan a full-fledged military power.

For years it seemed that there were only two ways to do this: amendment of the Constitution or what is called "amendment by interpretation." Amendent requires approval by two-thirds of both houses of the Diet as well as a majority in a national referendum. The LDP has never been able to muster enough support to do this, so it has relied on "amendment by interpretation." Thus Article 9's prohibition of war and preparation for war is "interpreted" to mean that the government can still establish a body of uniformed troops armed with guns, bombs, rockets, tanks, fighter-bombers, destroyers, etc.

But there is a limit to what can be done through "amendment by interpretation." Japan's Self-Defense Forces is one of the costliest and best-equipped military bodies in the world, but still it does not have the legal basis to go out and fight real wars.

Here is where the Koizumi Government's clever solution comes in: If you can't amend the Constitution, why not suspend it? How? By having the Diet pass a package of bills allowing the prime minister to call a state of emergency. This should satisfy everyone.

During peacetime, the people can have their Peace Constitution and Japan can be a peaceful country. Only in wartime, when the Peace Constitution is suspended and replaced by the state of emergency laws, will Japan become a country that can make war. Then when the war is over, the Peace Constitution will be reinstated and Japan will again become a peaceful country.

In short, the government must obey the law (the Constitution) at all times other than when it does not. Thus the difference between government policy and black humor evaporates.

Of course, there is no provision in the Constitution empowering the government to suspend it. If the government wants to give itself such power, the legal way to do so would be by constitutional amendment. That would be hard to achieve. So the government has presented the state of emergency provisions in the form of bills before the Diet, which require only a simple majority. The government is trying to make what is in fact a constitutional amendment by getting it passed in the Diet by only 51 percent.

So the state of emergency bills not only suspend the renunciation of war in Article 9 and the basic human rights clauses in the Constitution, but they also violate the very principle of constitutional government. If, with the Constitution in effect, the government is able to ignore its procedures for amendment and amend it with a bill in the Diet, what will the government be able to do when it has declared a state of emergency (martial law) and the Constitution is suspended?

Shukan ST: Sept. 6, 2002

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