Tag - article-9

 
 

ARTICLE 9

EDITORIALS
Mar 8, 2015
Learning from a sunken battleship
The discovery of the sunken battleship Musashi — the Imperial Japanese Navy’s biggest warship — by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen last week should serve as an opportunity for anybody to contemplate the real face of war.
Japan Times
JAPAN / Media / BIG IN JAPAN
Mar 7, 2015
Where will ‘proactive pacifism’ lead us?
Seventy years after World War II ended, should we be thinking about war or about peace?
COMMENTARY / Japan
Mar 6, 2015
Japan’s military normalization
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants Japan to become a ‘normal’ country again, with the capacity to defend its interests and citizens wherever they are threatened. But how should his government go about it?
EDITORIALS
Feb 25, 2015
Risky expansion of SDF missions
New Abe administration policies in the works appear to expand the scope of of SDF activities abroad to almost anything short of direct use of force.
JAPAN / Politics
Feb 12, 2015
Abe sidesteps expanded SDF role in Diet policy speech
Delivering a key policy speech at the Diet, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reiterated his determination Thursday to push for economic reforms but avoided touching the most controversial issue expected at this year’s ordinary Diet session: security bills to expand the scope of Self-Defense Forces missions....
JAPAN / Politics
Feb 5, 2015
Hostage crisis over, Abe looks to 2016 to launch constitutional amendment drive
With the Islamic State hostage crisis over, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says his long-sought goal of revising the Constitution should be chased in summer 2016.
Japan Times
COMMENTARY / COUNTERPOINT
Jan 31, 2015
Diplomatic blundering on hostages and history
Japan’s latest hostage crisis has exposed shortcomings in Japan’s public diplomacy and raises questions about the advice Prime Minister Shinzo Abe received in publicly announcing $200 million in humanitarian aid to help those displaced by conflict with the Islamic State group.
Japan Times
JAPAN / 70 YEARS OF PEACE AND PROSPERITY
Jan 2, 2015
As Abe pulls to the right, few go with him
How far has Japan shifted to the right? Is it trying to shed its legacy of postwar pacifism? Experts give their opinions on the LDP’s latest moves as the new year opens.
JAPAN / 70 YEARS OF PEACE AND PROSPERITY
Dec 31, 2014
Year ahead may mark turning point for SDF
The 70th year since the end of World War II may be a watershed for the Self-Defense Forces if they undergo the historic changes planned by the Cabinet.
JAPAN / Politics / ANALYSIS
Dec 31, 2014
Abe’s goal of constitutional reform faces many challenges
This will be a tough year for the Abe administration as the calendar is full of policy goals that are unpopular with voters, observers say, particularly on defense policy.
Japan Times
JAPAN
Oct 10, 2014
Article 9 campaigners disappointed by Nobel decision
The Nobel Committee disappoints those who backed war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution for the 2014 peace prize, but the campaigners promise to return stronger next year.
COMMENTARY / Japan
Sep 2, 2014
Wrong path to full sovereignty
The change in the government’s long-standing interpretation of Article 9 of the Constitution may lift some restrictions on Japan’s use of military force, but Japan will not become a full-fledged sovereign state as long as it has a leader who can neither think autonomously nor press a case on behalf of Japan with a negotiating partner.
JAPAN / ASHIDA'S WAR DIARY
Aug 17, 2014
The realist behind the idealist Constitution
A mystery surrounding late Prime Minister Hitoshi Ashida was his postwar call for Japan to re-militarize despite constitutional limits imposed by war-renouncing Article 9.
Japan Times
JAPAN / ASHIDA'S WAR DIARY
Aug 14, 2014
Diary spurs rethink of prewar anti-militarist, postwar prime minister
The anti-military stance of the editor of The Japan Times got him blacklisted during the war but helped him become prime minister three years after it ended.
JAPAN
Jul 22, 2014
Japanese lawmakers say war-renouncing Constitution deserves Nobel Peace Prize
A group of lawmakers callfor the Nobel Committee to award Article 9 of the Constitution this year’s Nobel Peace Prize, saying it would greatly encourage Japanese people as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe pushes to expand the nation’s military capacity.
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Voices
Jul 14, 2014
Osaka: Do you approve of the recent reinterpretation of constitutional limits on military action?
On July 2, the Cabinet approved a new interpretation of the Constitution that effectively broadens the range of situations in which the Self-Defense Forces are permitted to act militarily. Danny Gong asked interviewees in Osaka what they thought about this change.
COMMENTARY / Japan / COUNTERPOINT
Jul 12, 2014
Abe’s constitutional putsch and U.S. security cooperation
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s putsch involves bypassing constitutional procedures to revise the Constitution because he lacks sufficient support to win two-thirds approval in both houses of the Diet and a majority in a national referendum. Instead, Abe achieved by diktat what he could not gain democratically,...
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Issues / LAW OF THE LAND
Jul 9, 2014
Under Abe, Japan reconnects with the world of harm
It would be tragic if the process Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has set in motion destroys one of the truly great things about Japan: the fact that so little of its economy and society is devoted to harming other people.
JAPAN / Media / MEDIA MIX
Jul 5, 2014
Fiery Shinjuku protest goes global without NHK
Until the Great East Japan Earthquake, social media didn’t have much purchase on Japanese social life. But disasters are transformative, and in a country where the mass media is cautious about its role vis-a-vis the authorities, social media came into its own after the tsunami and meltdown.
COMMENTARY / Japan / COUNTERPOINT
Jul 5, 2014
Shinjuku self-immolation act protests Abe’s democracy hijack
Last week a man set himself on fire next to Shinjuku Station to reportedly protest Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s bid to lift constitutional constraints on Japan’s military forces. It was a gruesome spectacle captured on numerous smartphone videos and disseminated on social media. Good thing because the...

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