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Japan The Article 9 "No War" Clause
Another distinctive feature of the constitution, and
one that
has generated as much controversy as the status of the
emperor, is
the Article 9 "No War" clause. It contains two paragraphs:
the
first states that the Japanese people "forever renounce
war as a
sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of
force as a
means of settling international disputes"; the second
states that
"land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential
will
never be maintained." Some historians attribute the
inclusion of
Article 9 to Charles Kades, one of MacArthur's closest
associates,
who was impressed by the spirit of the 1928 Kellogg-Briand
Pact
renouncing war
(see Diplomacy
, ch. 1). MacArthur himself
claimed
that the idea had been suggested to him by Prime Minister
Shidehara. The article's acceptance by the Japanese
government may
in part be explained by the desire to protect the imperial
throne.
Some Allied leaders saw the emperor as the primary factor
in
Japan's warlike behavior. His assent to the "No War"
clause
weakened their arguments in favor of abolishing the throne
or
trying the emperor as a war criminal.
Article 9 has had broad implications for foreign
policy, the
institution of judicial review as exercised by the Supreme
Court,
the status of the Self-Defense Forces, and the nature and
tactics
of opposition politics
(see Major Foreign Policy Goals and Strategies
, ch. 7;
The Self-Defense Forces
, ch. 8). During
the late
1980s, increases in government appropriations for the
Self-Defense
Forces averaged more than 5 percent per year. By 1990
Japan was
ranked third, behind the then-Soviet Union and the United
States,
in total defense expenditures, and the United States urged
Japan to
assume a larger share of the burden of defense of the
western
Pacific. Given these circumstances, some have viewed
Article 9 as
increasingly irrelevant. It has remained, however, an
important
brake on the growth of Japan's military capabilities.
Despite the
fading of bitter wartime memories, the general public,
according to
opinion polls, continued to show strong support for this
constitutional provision.
Data as of January 1994
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