TOKYO, Nov 22: Japan would once again have a force described as the ‘military’ six decades after the United States stripped it of the right to keep armed forces, in the first revision of the post-World War II constitution proposed on Tuesday.
The revision will mean little practical change for Japan, which has skirted its 1947 constitution by calling its military the ‘Self-Defence Forces’, but marks a symbolic milestone in breaking another post-war taboo.
But the constitutional revisions risk raising tensions with neighbouring countries, which accuse Japan of not atoning for its past aggression.
US occupation forces ‘compiled the current Japanese constitution within nine days’, said former prime minister Yoshiro Mori, who led the constitutional revisions for the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP).
“We cannot possibly say the constitution was created by the Japanese people’s own hands,” Mori told the party faithful at a Tokyo hotel. “Finally now the time has come for us to compile our own constitution.”
Mori formally presented the draft before a 50th anniversary celebration for the LDP, the conservative party which has ruled Japan almost continuously since 1955 and which won an overwhelming majority in September elections.
The constitution is nearly certain to pass parliament, with the main opposition Democratic Party also backing revision. It would then be submitted to a referendum, with opinion polls indicating it would easily pass.—AFP
