2024.5.12.

Days ago, Prime Minister of Japan Kishida said at a meeting of the Budget Committee of the House of Representatives that "he remains unchanged in his intention to revise the Constitution and that he would go on to make every effort to advance."

It goes without saying that the real aim sought by Japan in its desperate moves for revising the Constitution is to turn it into a "country capable of fighting a war" by revising the "Pacifist Constitution" for the worse.

Article 9 of the Constitution of Japan enforced since 1947 stipulates that Japan will give up for ever the war started by its state power and the threat of armed forces or the use of armed forces as a means for settling international disputes.

The former chief of the Legislation Bureau of the Japanese Cabinet said:

Article 9 stipulates that Japan will have no ground, naval and air forces and other war capabilities. In other words, Japan will possess self-defence force not an army.

There are two pillars that support the concept of "self-defence". One is that the Japan Self-Defence Forces can protect only their own country and not use armed forces abroad. Another one is the "exclusive defense" whose important aspect is that the SDF cannot have offensive weapons and it cannot have the capability to directly attack other countries’ territories and territorial waters and airspace.

In this regard, it can be said that the Constitution has constrained to some extent the revival of Japanese militarism which had inflicted great damage on the peoples of Asian countries, advocating the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere."

But today, after a lapse of 77 years since the enforcement of the Constitution, Japan has completely removed the mask of "peace" which it had worn for form’s sake.

The prime minister, referring to the existence of SDF set up as the revising item of the Constitution, stressed that "it is an important work for showing the international community the will to defend the self-sustenance of the state and peace by putting an end to the theory of the SDF’s violating of the Constitution, and making the members of the SDF fulfill their duties with pride", and thus openly revealed where the purpose of the revision is.

As a matter of fact, the Japanese reactionaries have put spurs to turning Japan into a military giant after their defeat in the World War II behind the curtain of "peace" such as the "Pacifist Constitution", "era of peace", "peaceful development", "proactive pacifism" and "achieving peace".

With the revision of the "Japan-U.S. Defence Cooperation Guidelines" and the adoption of the "security legislation", they made it possible to expand the sphere of the SDF’s activities, confined to Japan’s vicinity, to the whole world and to exercise the "right to collective self-defence" under the pretext of military support to its allies.

The present Cabinet again revised the national security strategy, set by the Abe regime in 2013. It has approved the "securing of the capability of attacking enemy base" and is stepping up the preparation of long-range cruise missiles capable of directly attacking other countries’ territories.

According to the 2019-2023 trends in international arms transfers released by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute in Sweden on March 11, Japan purchased 29 fighters from the U.S. and ordered 400 long-range missiles for "enemy base attack", thus increasing its import of weapons by 155 percent over that in 2014-2018 to become the world’s sixth-ranked importer of weapons.

The Japanese government included in the 2024 budget the defence fund, which is 16.9 percent increase over the last year to reach the highest record in history, and formally passed it on March 28.

Also, after discarding the principle of banning the export of lethal weapons, the Cabinet meeting decided to allow the export of fighters to the third country.

In the final analysis, "the exclusive defense using defence capability only under attack, the abandonment of the possession of capability of attacking enemy base that means direct attack on other countries’ territories, the principle of banning the export of weapons and the maintenance of defence capability that basically constrains defence costs to 1% of GDP", touted by Japan in the past, have become a lip service.

Against such a background, the Japanese prime minister is crying out for the revision of the Constitution. This is aimed at legalizing the militarization moves for reinvasion ambition in an institutional way by removing even such article of the Constitution which had remained an empty document.

Japan, which suffered a bitter defeat while pursuing the militarist policy of overseas expansion, is rushing to turn itself into a militarist country and launch overseas expansion, oblivious of it. This is a foolish and reckless behavior of digging its own grave.

Rodong Sinmun