Nobel Physicist to Join Lawsuit against Japan Security Laws

July 30, 2018

Kyoto- Nobel Prize-winning physicist Toshihide Maskawa is set to join the plaintiffs in a damages lawsuit to be filed with Nagoya District Court on Thursday against Japan's national security legislation.

The legislation, enacted in 2015 and enforced in the following year, allows the country to exercise its right to collective self-defense, or use force to help allies overseas, based on relevant revisions to the government's interpretation of the war-renouncing constitution made in 2014.

"The constitutional interpretation has been watered down little by little," Maskawa, one of the three winners of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Physics, said in his office in Kyoto last week.

As a scientist, "I don't want to be involved in war," the 78-year-old professor at Kyoto Sangyo University, said, expressing concern about the military use of scientific achievements.

"Researchers in particle physics are privileged to use a lot of taxpayer's money, so we should speak out on this issue in order to return the favor," he stressed.

Maskawa, a native of Nagoya, also cited his war experience as a motivation for joining the lawsuit. In the central Japan city in March 1945, a U.S. firebomb broke through the roof of his house and fell just in front of him, who was five years old. "It didn't explode. That's why I'm alive today."

Maskawa may state his opinion in court in the Nagoya lawsuit, which is expected to be raised by 132 plaintiffs and 37 lawyers, according to the legal team.

In the damages lawsuit against the state, the plaintiffs will claim that the security legislation violates the constitution.

Similar lawsuits are now in progress at 21 district courts across Japan, involving a total of some 7,300 plaintiffs. Jiji Press