Tokyo Report | Politics | East Asia

Takaichi Sanae and the Constitutional Revision Debate

It’s not as simple as China would have it.

In elections for Japan’s Lower House held in early February, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) led by President Takaichi Sanae scored an historic victory, with the government parties winning more than two-thirds of the seats. Holding a two-thirds majority has tremendous significance in Japan, because it gives the government the ability to move forward with revising Japan’s constitution.

Reacting to the election results, China has sounded the alarm, stepping up its propaganda efforts to warn that Takaichi may seek to do just that. In fact, the LDP has been calling for constitutional revisions ever since it was founded. Yet the issue hardly came up during the Lower House elections; Takaichi and her party instead argued for consumption tax cuts and a more proactive fiscal policy. Now that revising the constitution is at least feasible, it is worth taking a closer look at some of the surrounding issues.

First, this is an institutional issue. Eighty years after World War II, not a single word of Japan’s constitution has been revised. It is quite rare for a country to leave its constitution entirely untouched for eight decades. One reason why Japan hasn’t made any changes is institutional. Revising the constitution requires that an original bill be submitted with the approval of the members of the Diet (at least 100 members in the House of Representatives and 50 in the House of Councilors). For the bill to be adopted, it needs support from more than two-thirds of both houses as well as a majority in a national referendum. The LDP now holds two-thirds of the seats in the House of Representatives, but not in the House of Councilors. If the LDP does decide to revise the constitution, how will it secure that number?

Second, there is the question of what actually is to be revised. Takaichi’s long-standing argument is that the constitution should make clear that the Self-Defense Forces are constitutional. This aligns with former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo’s proposal in May 2017 that the “Self-Defense Forces” should be explicitly acknowledged while keeping Paragraphs 1 and 2 of Article 9, a position that differs from the LDP’s earlier proposal (deleting Paragraph 2 of Article 9). Rather than being a new argument, it has been prepared as a refutation of the view prevalent among some leftists in Japan that the existence of the Self-Defense Forces itself is unconstitutional. However, public opinion polls make clear that only a small number of Japanese agree with that take. That is, both Abe and Takaichi have proposed that something largely accepted in Japan today should be added to the constitution. Meanwhile, separate from the question of the Self-Defense Forces, there has in recent years been growing sentiment in favor of adding an emergency clause to the constitution that would extend the terms of office of members of the Diet in the event of an emergency.

Another proposal would add articles on environmental rights and education. If this is put forward, which voters will be vocal in opposing it? Of course, there are concerns that if even........

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