I propose an individual paper that examines the controversy surrounding constitutional reform and emerging debates about what constitutes peace for Japan in the Reiwa era.

First, this paper traces the making of the Japanese Constitution by highlighting the so-called “Ashida amendments” of 1946 to Article 9 or the “peace clause” of the Constitution that renounces war and the use of force. It shows that the amendments made possible the interpretation that neither war nor the use of force is forbidden for self-defense purposes, thereby paving the way for legitimizing the existence of Japan’s “Self-Defense Forces” and American bases in Japan in reality. This paper argues that constitutional reform under discussion today—whether spelling out the Self-Defense Forces in Article 9 or deleting a paragraph to avoid any confusion—is unnecessary as it would not bring anything new into reality.

Second, this paper shows the ways in which the meaning of peace is proactively re-defined in Reiwa Japan in the face of threats posed by the aggressive rise of China and the possibility of a nuclear-armed reunified Korea. It argues that Japan’s nuclear option must be one of the components of what peace means for Japan in the new era as tensions over the anti-Japanese nuclear states are triggering debates in Japan about abandoning one of Japan’s three non-nuclear principles and adopting NATO’s nuclear-sharing arrangement.