‘Stop sucking up to America’: Japan’s youth rises up to protect pacifist constitution
It may be a toy, but Gohta Hashimoto’s lightsaber is symbolic of the battle he and his fellow protesters face as they attempt to derail moves by Japan’s government to change the country’s pacifist constitution for the first time in its 80-year history. “I’ve been interested in the constitution for about a year, ever since the rise of far-right parties in Japan,” says Hashimoto, a 22-year-old university student. “I wanted to be part of a movement that keeps my country peaceful and protects the constitution.” He and other young people are the driving force behind a growing movement to protect Japan’s supreme law, or constitution, a US-written document that is now being challenged by the demands of an American president. Their movement gained further urgency on Tuesday, when Japan’s government scrapped a ban on exports of lethal weapons – a move seen as a direct challenge to the country’s postwar pacifism. “The constitution enables us to stay out of America’s wars, including in this region,” says Yuri Hioki, at a rally in Tokyo. “The thought that might change makes me really angry”.
Hashimoto’s lightsaber is his contribution to a sea of light sticks, placards and flags filling public spaces across Japan, as people born more than half a century after its defeat in the second world war rush to their constitution’s defence, convinced it will ensure their country never again goes into conflict. On Sunday, an estimated 36,000 people squeezed on to narrow paths in front of the National Diet – Japan’s parliament – to call for an immediate end to the Iran war and to keep the country’s “pacifist” constitution intact. The event was the latest in a wave of protests that are attracting people in greater numbers each time. An estimated 3,600 people demonstrated in late February, swelling to 24,000 by late March, culminating in this weekend’s huge turnout. The biggest protests have been held in Nagatacho – Japan’s political nerve centre, located not far from the building in which the constitution was drafted by US officials under the watchful eye of Gen Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Powers, which effectively governed Japan for seven years after the end of the war. Seasoned left-leaning pacifists were joined by families with children and young people, with chants aimed at their prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, and Donald Trump, all against a backdrop of music, fancy dress and proclamations in Japanese and English. “No one should be sent to war” read one. “Cats, not bombs,” said another. Crowds chanted “Hands off the constitution” and called on their government to “stop sucking up to America”.
Some protesters carried balloons in the shape of the numeral nine – a reference to the “anti-war” clause of Japan’s constitution, which states that the “Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes”. The wave of demonstrations made Hashimoto realise he had taken the constitution for granted. “I always thought of politics as something for older people, but that feels like turning over my future to someone else,” he says at the launch of a petition to protect article 9. “Until now I’d never thought of the constitution as something young people needed to fight for.” ‘The last bulwark against war’ For Takaichi and other conservatives, article nine is synonymous with defeat and decades of subsequent self-flagellation over Japan’s wartime conduct across Asia. The country’s postwar pacifism, they argue, imposes unfair restrictions on its ability to defend itself and its interests in the face of a nuclear-armed North Korea and an increasingly assertive China. The Iran war, too, has not only highlighted Japan’s dependence on Middle East oil, but also the constitutional restraints that forced Takaichi to decline – with great reluctance, according to some media reports – Trump’s request last month that she send Japanese maritime self-defence forces (SDF) to the strait of Hormuz.
The US-Israel war on Iran – and Trump’s erratic handling of it – has compelled younger Japanese to speak out, says Koichi Nakano, a professor of political science at Sophia University in Tokyo. “The war has brought home the risk that Japan could get involved in an illegal war under Takaichi … so many more people feel they need to show their support for article 9 as the last bulwark against war”. Like her assassinated mentor, Shinzo Abe, Takaichi has long championed constitutional reform, which to succeed would require a two-thirds majority of both houses of parliament and a simple majority in a nationwide referendum – high hurdles that have failed to deter revisionists who see constitutional reform as an ideological imperative. Faced with legislative and public obstacles, Abe stretched the interpretation of article 9, pushing through legislation in 2015 to allow Japan to exercise collective self-defence – or coming to the aid of an ally under attack, even if Japan itself were not directly threatened. More recently, it has acquired the ability to conduct pre-emptive strikes against, say, missile bases in North Korea in the event of an imminent attack. Pro-revisionists “know that there is no real consensus on these supposedly constitutional offensive measures, so they want to put the final nail in the coffin of the peace constitution”, said Nakano.
“By making the SDF ‘constitutional’, they want to legitimise everything the SDF does, including the so-called limited collective self-defence. But they want to go well beyond that, too, so Japan finally becomes a ‘normal’ country like the US and Britain.” While the legislative shackles on Japan’s military have loosened, the ruling Liberal Democratic party’s (LDP) landslide victory in February’s lower house elections – in which it won a two-thirds “supermajority” – has strengthened Takaichi’s determination to amend the constitution for the first time since it went into effect in May 1947. “The time has come” for constitutional reform, she said this month at a convention to celebrate the LDP’s 70th anniversary. “An independent constitutional amendment at the hands of the Japanese people is our party’s long-cherished goal,” she said, adding that Japan should “turn a new page” in its security arrangements. The recent protests have united people across the generations – from postwar boomers who recall coming of age in a thriving country finally at peace, to university students inspired by the December 2024 light-stick protests against South Korea’s now-imprisoned president Yoon Suk Yeol. A Kyodo news agency analysis of location data from smartphone apps found that people in their 30s comprised the biggest single group of people taking part in a rally outside parliament on 8 April. More than 20% were in their 20s, and 60% of all protesters were women. It is not clear, though, what form Takaichi’s revisions would take. Amendments could include a passage recognising the legal status of the SDF, a relatively minor change but one that critics say could open the door to the scrapping of article 9 and an end to eight decades of official pacifism. But the road to constitutional reform could be a rocky one. Even if the LDP’s revisions pass though the lower house, it would have to win over opposition parties in the upper house, and could not count on a majority in favour among a deeply divided public.
While media polls have put support for change at or above 50% in recent years, some believe the Iran war could tip the scales in the opposite direction if voters believed an amendment would raise the risk of Japan becoming embroiled in overseas conflicts. Holding her bright yellow light stick, Hioki, a 28-year-old programmer, said the accessory had given her and other young people the courage to get involved in the article 9 movement. “When you have one of these it makes you realise you’re not alone,” she said. “It gives you the courage to come along and protest.”
