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Prof. Lee Jong Won, Rikkyo University (Japan)
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An Environmental Holiday May Be Renamed to Commemorate War Era
Prof. Lee Jong Won, Rikkyo University (Japan)
A long series of public holidays and weekends has just ended in Japan. This year, the days off weren't consecutive, but if you played your cards correctly you had a holiday period lasting about ten days. And since it was the nicest time of year, expressways across the country were so jammed with cars they looked like parking lots. This is a time when vacation spots are full of excitement, but this year has also seen public assemblies of a more serious nature, as May 5th lies square in the middle of the holiday season. The day celebrates the anniversary of the "Peace Constitution," ratified in 1946.
It won't be the same next year. April 29 is "Greenery Day," but as of next year it is going to be "Showa Day." It used to be observed as the Emperor's birthday, but after Showa Emperor Hirohito died in January 1989, it was changed to Greenery Day. There were calls at the time for the holiday commemorating Emperor Hirohito to remain Showa Day, but the holiday was changed to something nonpolitical because of considerable opposition. People have complicated views about the Showa era, and they are hesitant about assessing Hirohito's role in history. By 1992, members of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party began a campaign to have the date be "Showa Remembrance Day," but this was again answered with calls for prudence, and the holiday never materialized.
Japan's turn toward the political Right in the late 1990s has altered things further. A bill for the creation of "Showa Day" passed in the House of Representatives, during the era of Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, who called Japan a "divine country," but the bill was withdrawn for a lack of public support. The push for renaming the holiday gained strength within the Liberal Democratic Party with the formation of the cabinet of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, and in May last year the Diet passed a bill officially renaming the holiday. The fact that it wasn't even controversial shows how Japanese society has changed. Beginning next year, many events are planned to "commemorate" the war era known as "Showa."
This year marks the 60th anniversary of Japan's Peace Constitution. Next year it may be reborn in a different form. Actual amendment of the constitution would take at least three or four years. According to recent opinion surveys, most people do not want to revise Article 9 of the constitution, in which Japan foregoes the right to wage war. However, it looks like there will be more pressure to revise the constitution as time goes on. The strongest pressure will come from the United States. The day before "Constitution Memorial Day," May 1, the U.S.-Japan Security Consultative Committee, known as the 2+2 Meeting, announced that it had given final approval to plans for reorganizing the United States Forces Japan (USFJ). The media called it a "new era" and a "third phase" in the U.S.-Japan alliance, and it was not exaggerating the gravity of the proposed changes. In 1954, during the Cold War, the two countries signed a mutual defense treaty and the Self Defense Forces (SDF) was established. The first response to the post-Cold War era came in 1997, with the signing of the U.S.-Japan Defense Cooperation Guidelines. This "third phase" entails the global expansion of the area covered by the alliance and of the role Japan plays militarily. At the core of this new reorganization of the USFJ are the integration of U.S. and Japanese forces and the unification of command functions. The 1st U.S. Army Corps, which is responsible for the Pacific and Indian oceans, will be moved to Camp Zama, near Tokyo. The SDF's elite "Central Readiness Force" command will move to Zama as well, with the two command centers will be side by side. Should trouble break out anywhere on the Korean peninsula, in China, Southeast Asia, or from Central Asia to the Indian Ocean, the SDF could be put into action under U.S. command. That would be hard under the current Japanese constitution. So far, Japan has passed special laws designed to give missions legitimacy with "rear-position support in non-combat areas." This is another reason why there are concrete moves being made to amend the constitution to allow the SDF to be dispatched without special legislation. Speaking about a Liberal Democratic Party bill that would elevate the status of the SDF to that of a regular military, one Japanese journalist said, "Now that the war generation is retiring, the military is coming back. Is Japan returning to the Showa era?"
