Japanese Constitutional Reform : Consequences Of Article 9

With recent tensions rising between North Korea and the world, it is no surprise that the Japanese citizens are aligning themselves with a nationalist government. Japanese Prime Minister Abe has started to consider revoking the disarmament treaty. Revoking it would let Japan increase spending on the military, which would ultimately result in a much larger and advanced military. Although rearming the Japanese military would improve security in the country, it would only increase the tension, doing damage to not only myself, but future generations of Japanese citizens.

While World War II had been ongoing since 1939, Japan had been fighting for the Axis powers, against the United States. In 1941, when Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor, the United States government had assumed the viewpoint that the Japanese were not to be trusted, and that the Japanese-American citizens of the United States were much the same. As such, they had resorted to establishing internment camps, or preventive labor prisons, so as to keep them in check and ostensibly to prevent further Japanese sabotage. However, the government’s actions were not fully justified, as several factors had interplayed into the circumstances that directly contradicted the intentions and visible results of the internment of the Japanese-Americans, in the social, political, economical, and cultural aspects. On the whole, the internment camps served as drastic measures which were not wholly without reasoning; contrarily, those factors in support of the internment camps did not override those which had gone against it, since the United States’ own legislation, in the form of the Constitution and other laws, had explicitly prevented the depriving of human rights, privileges, and pursuits, which had doubtless applied in light of the Japanese-Americans’ universal citizenship along the Pacific Coast in the early 1940s. As such, while the internment camps were not completely unjustified and without purpose from the viewpoint of the government, they did not align with standards of law and

     During this time of crisis in America, the Japanese people in our country were done a huge injustice. They were stripped their constitutional rights, relocated to a location with poor living conditions, and when America apologized it was just too late. The mental and physical health impacts of this event continues to affect tens of thousands of Japanese

Week 5--Annotated bibliography for the Final Paper. Your bibliography should include references to at least six outside sources. Also required is a brief, one-paragraph summary of the publication and your reasoning as to why this source is important to the topic you are investigating.

On August 15th Japan surrendered, and on September 2nd, 1945 they signed the “Instrument of Surrender”. Hospitals were filled with patients who had not seemed sick before. People vomited, bled from their gums, and spots had begun to appear on their skin. Later Japanese doctors discovered that the people were dying from radiation that came from the atomic bomb. {look up: conspiracy theory} When considering using the atomic bombs, President Truman took into account the lowest possible cost for ending the war, he also wanted to end the war quickly. Truman once stated, “When you have to deal with a beast you have to treat him as a beast.” After the Pearl Harbor invasion. The U.S. started with “Operation Downfall,” invading Kyushu, many casualties where estimated, but this war proved to be even more deadly than predicted. General MacArthur thought that dropping more bombs, and using air power by itself would protect American lives, while also bringing forth a quicker surrender from the Japanese. When I look at both sides of the 1945 Japan bombing I really tried to stay open about the different viewpoints. The fact that the U.S., Britain, and the Netherlands crippled Japan was interesting to find. I felt that the Japanese did not want to compromise, and in some way bit the hands that fed them. It seems these allies had allot of power. The Japanese seemed to only

The declaration was harsh but fair and informed Japan of the terms that they must oblige by in order to avoid the Atomic bombs being dropped on Japanese territory. The declaration outlined that the Japanese government leading the war would be removed, the country’s borders reduced to its pre-war geography, and that there would be an Allied occupation of Japan. Moreover, after the dismemberment of the military, its occupants would be allowed to return home and live freely. Furthermore, assurance was provided that the Allied forces had no intention to enslave or harm the Japanese people but would instead hold war crimes trials. The declaration concluded by reinstating that the “…Government of Japan proclaim now the unconditional surrender of all the Japanese armed forces…the alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction." This demonstrates that the Japanese were given reasonable surrender terms and fair warning of a military attack if they failed to comply with the terms and conditions outlined in the declaration. Additionally, another method used to warn the Japanese civilians of an impending attack was

Article 9. The Diet shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. Every person shall have freedom of religious belief, and the special privileges that every shrine has ever had shall be abolished.

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, America turned its fears on the Japanese and Japanese-Americans that resided on the nation’s Pacific coast. The Japanese were forced to relocate to internment camps, leave their American life behind, endured the harsh internment camp conditions, and still faced obstacles upon release, such as not being able to return to their regular lives. Despite the constitutional rights that the Japanese Americans had, they endured the hardships of their uprooting, subpar camp conditions, and faced their losses after their release and closing of the internment camps.

On the 6th and 9th of August, 1945, the United States of America dropped the Atomic Bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The use of these bombs brought a quick end to World War 2, yet caused extensive damage to the two Japanese cities. There have often been disputes as to whether the USA was justified in the dropping of the atomic bombs because of the damage they caused, not only to the cities, but to the people of Japan as well. Many people believe that the USA should not have dropped the bombs because of the damage they caused, and they also claim that Japan was already defeated. However, Japan did not surrender, and prolonging the war was not an option for America, as it believed it would cause even more casualties, not only to American troops, but to Japan as well. Thus the USA was justified in dropping the bombs on Japan.

First of all, their rights were taken away. The Japanese were taken to camps for the reason being they looked like the people who had attacked Pearl Harbor. They were put into small and harsh conditions to live and even with they had a big family and a small room which was called home. Then their lives

As the war continued and violence escalated, bombings caused enormous destruction and high death tolls, leading inevitably to the use of the atomic bombs. The bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki represented a culmination in the destructiveness of bombings, not a significant deviation from previous bombing practices. The alternatives to the use of the atomic bomb were likely to have caused equal suffering for the Japanese people. The use of the atomic bomb was no less moral than these horrific wartime practices. Harry Truman’s decision to use the atomic bomb against Japan was justified by Japan’s refusal to immediately surrender. Harry Truman gave the Japanese time to surrender in order to preserve the existence of their people. They did not comply and as a result endured the consequences. (Walker) Yet an alternate perspective states that it was quite unnecessary to drop the Atomic Bombs in that Japan was practically an already defeated opponent. If a conditional surrender were to be issued by the United States to Japan in

The following day on December eighth,1941, the United States declared war on Japan.2 Throughout the war, advances in technology and warfare strategy would lead to a considerably larger casualty count. Some of these notable advancements include the airlift, anti-aircraft weaponry, the jet aircraft, and the strategies of naval warfare. Tanks had now evolved into main weapons for land warfare. Some notable advancements in the weapons department are the portable machine gun and the assault rifle. However, the most important advancement is the atomic bomb. The atomic bomb would be used in 1945 to force the Japanese into surrendering.3 Long before the bomb was dropped, Japan was given a list of terms for surrender known as the Potsdam Declaration. Some of these terms were as follows: war against Japan will not end until Japan surrenders. The United States cannot and will not deviate from the terms given to Japan for complete surrender. The Japanese military shall be disarmed and allowed to return home safely with no consequences. The Japanese people will not be enslaved or annihilated. Japan can

3rd verse of the 1st chapter of Meiji Constitution (Dainihon Teikoku Kenpou) describes Japanese Emperor as a sacred person whose relation with Japanese gods, and inviolable. In addition, these religious characters explained further by 4th verse, stated the Emperor was the head of Empire. These 2 verses of Japan Meiji Constitution provided legitimation of Emperor power from religious side and he governed Japan as empire with it. This is the basic concept of Japanese modern imperial system (Tennoousei Kokka) and it puts Shinto as state religion (Kokka Shintou). However, Kokka Shinto existance as ideology was not so old, since it was an acumullation of some concept developed by Late-Mitogaku and Hirata Atsutane stream of Kokugaku, in other words,

Throughout the work, Fujitani draws evidence from, and references, a plethora of different sources that add validity to his statements and accounts of not only what the Japanese and United States did, but also why they acted the way they did. In a time of war, both countries took different actions that were not readily understood. Japan

One of the more recognizable constitutions of Japan stems from the five promises of the Charter Oath proclamation only months following the end of the Boshin War—more commonly known to us as the Meiji Restoration—in 1868 to modernize Japan to compete with the various Western nations militarily and economically whilst providing it citizens with a mixed form of constitutional and absolute monarchy system; but even the more hawkish and traditional elements within the empire had most of the political power in the Imperial Diet: members of the lower chamber (the House of Representatives) were democratically-elected representatives chosen by the people whereas the upper chamber (House of Peers) were not elected at all but instead each seat was held