On that same day, the government held what was billed as the first “National Sovereignty Day.” The date was said to commemorate the 61st anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of San Francisco in 1952, which restored Japan sovereignty and ended the American Occupation (save for Okinawa, which was returned only in 1972.)
Speaking in the presence of the Emperor and Empress, Abe said, “the next task for us is to revise the Constitution.” That goal called attention to another conservative obsession, revising the constitution that was written by Americans during the Occupation. It seemed to have lot to do with the elevation of the date, April 28, which previously had no special meaning to most Japanese.
Amending or abolishing the current constitution in favor of a new one has been a hobby horse of Japanese conservatives, including Abe, for years. They say that it is humiliating to be governed under a document written mainly by foreign occupiers. The extreme nationalist Shintaro Ishihara says he would have ditched the whole thing as soon as Japan was free to do so.
Ishihara is not a fringe figure. He is the co-leader of the Japan Restoration Party, which with 51 seats is the third largest bloc in the lower house of parliament. The other co-leader, Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto, shares his feelings about changing the charter.
Abe has already had meeting with leaders of this party and the two could easily put together the two-thirds majority needed to change the document (whether the two-thirds could be mustered in the upper house even after an electoral victory is debatable.) Their first move will be to change the rule to allow a simple majority enough to approve amendments subject to a national plebiscite.
Although most attention is focused on repealing or altering the famous “no war” Article 9, the LDP’s proposed alternative charter, made public a year ago even before the general election, goes much further in replacing what it terms foreign universal values with more traditional Japanese values, as they view them.
Many will be watching what the new government does in August, the traditional time linked to Japan’s surrender on Aug. 15, when Japanese leaders make official visits to the Yasukuni shrine if in fact they are going to make them. Whether they make the visits may depend on how the Japanese public reacts to this recent testing of the political waters.
At the moment there are no current public opinion polls to test the public reaction (though much commentary on Sunday talks shows was negative). One thing is fairly certain: The Abe administration will be more strongly influenced by local opinion than that of its neighbors.
