Japan Press Weekly

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2025 April 30 - May 13 TOP3 [POLITICS]

38K citizens in rally call for using war-renouncing Japanese Constitution to create true peace

Holding various placards, such as “Love Our Constitution!”, nearly 38,000 people on May 3, the day celebrating the 78th anniversary of the enforcement of the postwar Constitution, assembled in a Tokyo park, resolving to create a genuine peace with the use of the Constitution.

On this day, calling for defending and putting to proper use the Constitution, rallies and demonstrations took place at many locations across the country.

At the Tokyo rally, co-head of the All-Out Action Committee consisting of trade unions and a wide range of civil groups, Hishiyama Naoko in her speech given on behalf of the organizing committee stressed that despite repeated attempts, constitutional amendments have not been proposed due to pro-constitution citizens’ tenacious struggle to defend the Constitution irregardless of political differences. Appealing for the need to defend the Constitution to create a genuine peace, she called on the participants to take advantage of the All-Out Action Committee-led signature-collection drive and this summer’s House of Councilors election, and to pressure constitutional revisionists into giving up any further attempts to have the Constitution adversely revised.

Japanese Communist Party Executive Committee Chair Tamura Tomoko, along with representatives of the Constitutional Democratic Party of Japan, “Reiwa” party, Social Democratic Paty, and the parliamentary group “Okinawa Whirlwind”, delivered speeches in solidarity.

Tamura said, “In this year marking 80 years since the end of the war, let us significantly expand collaboration with like-minded individuals and organizations on the single issue of not allowing any move to turn Japan into a warfighting nation!” She went on to say, “Let us work together to create a new Japan where all articles of the Constitution will be properly implemented, where peace and democracy will be advanced significantly, and where the general public are the protagonists. The JCP will make all-out efforts to achieve this.”

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Meanwhile on the same day, pro-constitutional revision groups, including the rightwing, anti-constitutional organization Japan Conference (Nippon Kaigi), held their rally in Tokyo. Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru sent a video message in which he said that his top priority is to add a contingency clause to the Constitution and to stipulate explicitly the legal status of the Self-Defense Forces in Article 9.

The rally adopted a statement calling for joint work among pro-constitutional revision forces in the Diet for the introduction of a contingency clause and the legitimation of the SDF in Article 9.

At the rally, the Liberal Democratic and Komei parties plus their supplementary forces, the “Nippon Ishin no Kai” party and the Democratic Party for the People, were present and expressed their support for the statement.