Abstract
This chapter provides an overview of and analysis on how Japan’s post war constitution of 1946 in general and its ‘pacifist’ Article 9 came into being: who were the protagonists on the Japanese and American side and what were the controversies surrounding the drafting and adoption of Japan’s ‘pacifist’ constitution. Amongst others, the US motives and motivations to retain the Japanese Emperor on the throne in post war Japan will be analysed: why did the occupying US go great lengths to retain the ‘undemocratic’ Emperor and Emperor system while introducing democracy and democratic political structures into defeated post war Japan? Finally, when and why did the US gave up on MacArthur’s initial plan to make an ‘unarmed pacifist’ out of Japan and what impact did the US ‘imposition’ of Japan’s post war constitution have on Japan’ post war Japan’s obligations to deal with its World War II responsibilities?
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
Japan’s 1889 constitution—the so-called ‘Meiji Constitution’ named after Japan’s imperial Meiji Era (1868–1912)—assigned Japan’s sovereignty unambiguously to the Japanese Emperor who ruled the country by ‘divine’, i.e. God-given right. The Japanese Emperor held supreme powers with the Japanese people charged with the role of serving and obeying the absolute monarch. The elected Japanese parliament was officially in charge of running Japan’s state affairs, but the Emperor had the right to dissolve the parliament any time he wanted.
- 2.
Then Commander-in-Chief of the U.S. Army Forces in the Pacific during World War II. He was appointed as the ‘Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers’ (SCAP) on August 14, 1945.
- 3.
Which is somehow ironic as the US War of Independence was about getting rid of a monarch (the British Queen).
- 4.
Former US Vice-President Richard Nixon e.g. called Japan’s war-renouncing Article 9 a ‘mistake’ in 1953.
- 5.
After Japan’s surrender and acceptance of the ‘Potsdam Declaration’, military hostilities between Japan and the ‘Allied Forces’, however, continued for several days. Japan’s Imperial Army continued to fight Soviet Union troops in Manchuria and the United States in the South Pacific. In fact, two days after Japan’s ‘War Council’ agreed to surrender, a Japanese submarine sank the Oak Hill, an American landing ship, and the Thomas F. Nickel, an American destroyer, both in the vicinity of the Japanese island of Okinawa.
- 6.
This led a group of 1,000 Japanese soldiers to storm the Imperial Palace in Tokyo in an unsuccessful attempt to find the Emperor’s pre-recorded proclamation and prevent it from being transmitted on the radio.
- 7.
Who would later be indicted as A-class criminal of war.
- 8.
Established October 2, 1945.
- 9.
After MacArthur was relieved of his command by US President Truman on April 11, 1951, General Matthew B. Ridgway took over as ‘Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP)’ in Japan. The ‘GHQ’ ceased to exist after ‘The San Francisco Peace Treaty’ came into effect on April 28, 1952.
- 10.
A committee established in December of 1944 with the aim of coordinating US post war Japan policies coordinating policies of the three departments after the end of World War II. 'SWNCC' coordinated the policies of each department (i.e. ‘State’, ‘War’ and ‘Navy’), and upon receiving the approval from the Joint Chiefs of Staff they became official policy of the US government. ‘The Subcommittee on the Far East’ (SFE) was later established under the auspices of the ‘SWNCC’ to draft a plan for the occupation of Japan.
- 11.
The Emperor ‘being satisfied’ with how the US implemented its occupation policies in Japan somehow made it sound as if he understood the meeting as to be a meeting during which MacArthur found himself obliged to explain or justify US occupation policies to the Emperor. Given the position the Emperor and the country found itself in 1945 it is very unlikely that MacArthur in any way saw himself obliged to get the Emperor’s ‘approval’ for any of his occupation policies.
- 12.
To be sure, from Reischauer’s perspective-undoubtedly characterized by an enormous level of arrogance towards what would in 1945 become a defeated and demoralized Japan-the sort of ‘authority’ that would serve and protect US post war interests in Japan. In other words: the Emperor was to become an ‘agent’ and promoter of US interests in occupied Japan, Reischauer seemed to suggest.
- 13.
While attending the Command and General Staff School in the US in the 1944–1945, Fellers produced a research titled ‘The Psychology of the Japanese Soldier’ in which he predicted war between the US and Japan and also predicted that the Japanese army would use ‘kamikaze’ tactics when attacking US targets. He also wrote ‘Answer to Japan’ in which he argued that the Japanese Emperor would have a central role in US post war policy planning in Japan.
- 14.
Fellers repeatedly encouraged Japanese royalists to develop arguments and a defence, which would ‘prove’ that the Emperor was not directly responsible for the attack onto Pearl Harbour.
- 15.
There is plenty of evidence that the Emperor was well-informed on the Japanese Imperial Army’s intentions to attack the US on Pearl Harbor.
- 16.
Not a ‘real’ face-to-face interview, but the Emperor sending written answers to questions submitted to him by the New York Times reporter.
- 17.
Fellers referred to the Emperor’s message to the Japanese people on the radio on August 14, 1945 ‘ordering’ them to accept defeat and the ‘Potsdam Declaration’ in this context.
- 18.
Sato played an important role on the Japanese side in the revision of the Japanese constitution and his views and assessments of what ‘happened’ during the US-Japanese revision process are considered to be authoritative and accurate in both inside and outside of Japan.
- 19.
He speaks in his 1956 MacArthur biography of a ‘happy coincidence’ of a US B-29 flying over the garden of the foreign minister’s residence during the meeting making it very clear who the victor and the defeated was in Japan. ‘A Happy coincidence’ and forceful reminder, Whitney writes, that the Japanese delegation were given no choice but to accept the fact that the ‘SCAP’ and not the Matsumoto draft constitution would be the basis of Japan post war constitution.
- 20.
Koseki’s book was published in English in 1998 by Westview, Bolder, Colorado as The Birth of Japan’s Post war Constitution.
- 21.
Shidehara calls himself the author of the war-renouncing clause claiming that an experience in a tram in Tokyo after the war made him suggest the introduction of a war-renouncing article into the Japanese constitution. In essence and according to his accounts it was an encounter with a young and desperate man in a tram expressing his desperation about the war and Japanese militarism to other passengers in Tokyo, which allegedly made him decide that Japan must abolish militarism forever.
- 22.
Max Bishop too, a SCAP political adviser, confirmed on March 8, 1946 that he was taken by surprise by MacArthur’s draft constitution.
- 23.
Also to be translated as ‘Japaneseness’.
- 24.
‘Self-Defence Forces’ and not ‘Armed Forces’ to avoid accusations that Japan was violating Article 9 of the constitution.
- 25.
In 1993, Abe he joined the LDP’s ‘History and Deliberation Committee’, which in 1995 published a book calling Japan’s World War II a war of ‘self-defence’, denying that Japan committed war crimes like the Nanking Massacre and the forced recruitment of Korean so-called ‘Comfort Women’. In February 1997, Abe formed a group with like-minded revisionists, the ‘Group of Young Diet Members for Consideration of Japan’s Future and History Education’, and became its executive director. Half of the ministers of his cabinet today are members of that group. Before being appointed as President of the LDP President in 2012, Abe signed an ad in a New Jersey newspaper denying that Japan’s military forced Asian women to ‘work’ as prostitutes (which are referred to as ‘comfort women’ in Japanese) for the Imperial Army during World War II. After coming to office in December 2012, Abe appointed Hakubun Shimomura as Minister for Education, who in 2012 urged Abe to declare that the 1937 Nanking Massacre did not take place and that the ‘comfort women’ issue does not even exist. He also called on Abe to negate the Tokyo Trials verdicts as legitimate while calling on Abe to visit the Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo (which he then did in December 2013). He, Abe and other revisionists in the LDP are also planning to review and re-write some of the country’s history textbooks, which in their view take a “self-deprecating” view of Japanese history. In order to ‘correct’ such views, they are planning on revising the screening process, which stipulates the obligation to take into account Japan’ World War II actions and with them the feelings of Japan’s geographical neighbours when deciding on the contents and language of Japanese history schoolbooks. In his 2006 book ‘Toward a Beautiful Nation’ Abe complains about what he calls post war ‘victor’s justice’ writing that the conviction of Japanese citizens as war criminals by the post war Tokyo International War Crimes Tribunal were unlawful as those convicted were not war criminals under Japanese law at the time. Finally, Abe is heading the group called ‘Japan Rebirth’ (Sousei Nippon), a cross-party neo-conservative and revisionist group of Japanese lawmakers.
References
Ashida H (1946) Shin Kempo Kaishaku. Daimondo-sha, Tokyo
Bix HP (1992) The Showa emperor’s monologue and the problem of war responsibility. J Japanese Stud 18(2):318–321
Bix HP (1995) Japan’s delayed surrender: a reinterpretation. Diplomatic Hist 19(2):197–225
Borton H (1955) Japan’s modern century. Ronald Press Company, New York
Bowers F (1988) The day the general blinked. New York Times, New York
Buckley R (1998) Japan today, 3rd edn. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge
Dower J (1999a) Embracing Defeat. Penguin Books, London
Dower J (1999b) Tennosei minshushugi no tanjo. Sekai, Tokyo, pp 221–232
Eto J (1980) One aspect of the allied occupation of Japan: the censorship operation and postwar Japanese literature occasional paper Wilson center. Smithsonian Institution, Washington
Eto J (1981) The constraints of the 1946 constitution. Japan Echo 8(1):44–50
Halliday J, Cumings B (1988) Korea: the unknown war. Penguin-Viking, London
Hata I (1978) Tenno no Shinso. Bungei Shunju, Tokyo, pp 374–392
Hook G, McCormack G (2001) Japan’s contested constitution-documents and analysis. Routledge, London
Kades, G (1982) General Douglas MacArthur and the constitutional disarmament of Japan, 3rd Series. Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, Tokyo, pp 35–50
Kades C (1989) The American role in revising Japan’s imperial constitution. Polit Sci Q 104(1):215–247
Katz R (2014) Abe not placating the right; he is the right, EastAsia Forum. http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2014/01/13/abe-not-placating-the-right-he-is-the-right/
Kitaoka S (1999) The constitutional debate in Japan: cutting the gordian knot. In: Japan Review of International Affairs, pp 191–205
Kojima N (1975) Tenno to Amerika to Taiheiyo Senso. Bungei Shunju, Toyko, pp 115–119
Koseki S (1989) Shian Kenpoo no Tanjoo (The Birth of the New Constitution). Chuokoron-sha, Tokyo
Lambert R (2004) The maintenance of imperial Shinto in postwar Japan as seen at Yasukuni Shrine and Its Yushukan Museum. Asia-Pac Perspect IV(1):9–18
MacArthur D (1964) Reminiscences. McGraw-Hill, New York
Mc Nelly T (1959) The Japanese constitution, child of the cold war. Polit Sci Q 74(2):176–195
McCormack G (1996) The emptiness of Japanese affluence. M.E. Sharpe, New York
Moore R, Robinson D (2002) Partners for democracy-crafting the new Japanese state under MacArthur. Oxford University Press, New York
Pempel TJ (1987) The far baby target: reform of the Japanese bureaucracy. In: Ward RE, Sakamato Y (eds) Democratizing Japan. University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, pp 157–197
Political Reorientation of Japan, vol II, p 737, US Government Printing Office, Washington, 1949
SWNCC 228, January 7, 1946, Foreign relations of the United States, 1946, vol 8, pp 220–226
Sato T (1957) Origin and development of the draft constitution of Japan. Foreign Affairs Association of Japan, Tokyo
Sato T (1999) Nihonkoku Tanjooki. Chuo Koronsha, Tokyo
Sissons DCS (1961) The pacifist clause of the Japanese constitution: legal and political problems of rearmament. Int Aff 37(1):45–59
Spykman NJ (1942) America’s strategy in world politics. Harcourt Brace, New York
Takahashi T (2014) Abe’s Yasukuni visit: the view from Japan, EastAsiaForum. http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2014/01/24/abes-yasukuni-visit-the-view-from-japan/
Tanaka H (1987) The conflict between two legal traditions in making the constitution of Japan. In: Ward RE, Sakamoto Y (eds) Democratizing Japan; Honolulu, University of Hawaii Press, pp 107–132
Tsurumi S, Nakagawa E (1989) Tenno Hyakuwa, vol 2. Chikuma Shoten, Tokyo
United States Senate Military Situation in the Far East, Hearings before the Committee on Armed Service and the Committee on Foreign Relations 1951
U.S. Initial Post-Surrender Policy for Japan of September 6, 1945, Government of the United States of America, Washington
Ward RE (1987) Presurrender planning: treatment of the emperor and constitutional changes. In: Ward RE, Yoshikazu S (eds) Democratizing Japan. University of Hawaii Press, Honolulu, pp 1–41
Whitney C (1956) MacArthur: his rendezvous with history. Knopf, New York
Woodward WP (1972) The allied occupation of Japan, 1945–1952, and Japanese religions. E.J. Brill, Leiden
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2014 Springer-Verlag Italia
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Berkofsky, A. (2014). Japan’s US-‘Imposed’ Post War Constitution: How, Why and What for?. In: Beretta, S., Berkofsky, A., Rugge, F. (eds) Italy and Japan: How Similar Are They?. Perspectives in Business Culture. Springer, Milano. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-88-470-2568-4_5
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-88-470-2568-4_5
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Milano
Print ISBN: 978-88-470-2567-7
Online ISBN: 978-88-470-2568-4
eBook Packages: Business and EconomicsEconomics and Finance (R0)