Abe resolved on constitutional change in 2020; Opposition head wary

May 4, 2019

Tokyo--Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reiterated his goal of revising the Japanese constitution and bringing the amended top law into effect in 2020, in a video message released on Friday, the first Constitution Day of the country since its new era of Reiwa started on Wednesday.

"There is no change in my hope," he said in the message, which was delivered to a meeting of people supporting constitutional amendments, held in Tokyo by a private-sector organization the same day.

Abe sent the video message in his capacity as president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

Meanwhile, Yukio Edano, head of the major opposition Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, warned that Japan's constitutionalism is "at substantial risk," at a meeting held in the Japanese capital by those opposing a revision of the supreme law.

Friday marked the 72nd anniversary of the constitution's entry into force.

Abe said, "In the first year of the new era, we should start now head-on discussions on how our country should be in the future," urging the Diet, the country's parliament, to hold active debates on constitutional amendments.

At the same time, Abe called on each member of the public to consider the matter as his or her own issue and deepen understanding.

Abe voiced his hope afresh to clarify the existence of the Self-Defense Forces in war-renouncing Article 9 of the constitution, saying, "I'll stand at the forefront and fulfill my responsibility."

He also said he hopes to revise education-related articles in the constitution.

But Abe stopped short of specifying when the LDP's constitutional revision proposals will be submitted to the Diet.

Besides Edano, leaders of three other opposition parties--the Democratic Party for the People, or the DPFP, the Japanese Communist Party and the Social Democratic Party--attended the meeting among opponents of a constitutional revision.

"I'll spearhead the efforts to overturn the Abe government, aiming to create a righteous society in which people with authority are bound by the constitution," Edano said.

The meeting was attended by some 65,000 people, according to its organizers.

Participants, including scholars, as well as the opposition leaders, vowed to block a revision of the constitution by the Abe administration.

"Failure to vote would amount to supporting authoritarianism. We must now change the government, not the constitution," Kyoto University Prof. Kanako Takayama said, apparently in reference to the election this summer for the House of Councillors, the upper chamber of the Diet.

The meeting among proponents of constitutional revisions attracted some 1,100 participants, according to its organizers.

"Without a change in the constitution, the reconstruction of our country would be impossible," conservative journalist Yoshiko Sakurai said.

"We should work together to create the beautiful Reiwa era while prompting the Diet's constitutional panels to speed up debates," she said.

Shiro Sakurai, 19, a second-year university student in Tokyo, said that he sees the need to amend the constitution, which is more than 70 years old.

Also on Friday, senior officials of the ruling and opposition parties crossed swords in a television debate aired by Japan Broadcasting Corp., or NHK, the nation's public broadcaster.

Hakubun Shimomura, chief of the LDP's Headquarters for the Promotion of Revision of the Constitution, called for the top law to be revised to make it clear that the SDF is constitutional.

DPFP leader Yuichiro Tamaki voiced caution, saying that the LDP's constitutional revision plan could expand the scope of the self-defense right without limits.

Akira Koike, head of the JCP's secretariat, expressed opposition to a constitutional revision, saying that the Abe administration's constitutional reform drive lacks support from the public.Jiji Press