Scholars and critics speak up in defense of constitutional principles

About 400 people joined well-known critics, writers, and constitutional
scholars in a speech assembly in Tokyo on November 20 to defend the Japanese
Constitution.

The assembly was held by the "Forum for the Rebirth of the Constitution,"
a group of scholars and critics established in September to seek ways to
block the accelerated moves of the ruling parties toward an adverse revision
of the Constitution. They have determined to study, speak, and act to defend
the constitutional principles of peace.

Critic Kato Shuichi, writer Inoue Hisashi, and two constitutional
scholars, on behalf of the forum, made speeches.

On the law to send the Self-Defense Forces abroad to take part in the
U.S. war, Kato said that it amounts to an open challenge to the
Constitution's aim. By stretching the interpretation of the Constitution to
a virtual revision, the government has enacted the SDF dispatch law and
other laws which can hardly be accepted as constitutional.

Inoue spoke about a public assembly on the Constitution in which 1,200
people took part. This, Inoue said, shows a growing public awareness that
"we'll never be deceived," he said.

Taking up a government argument on the SDF dispatch bill that "What the
Diet needs is not theologists' futile discussion but debates based on common
sense," constitutional scholar Higuchi Yoichi warned that rules of the
international community should not be so easily distorted.

Mizushima Asaho, also a constitutionalist, said, "Now, politicians are
incapable of understanding what constitutionalism means. Citizens must be
put on alert." (end)