LDP charter change will return Japan to pre-war authoritarianism, critics warn
Law professors fear the ruling party's plan to amend the 1946 constitution will restore authoritarian rule in Japan and stifle dissent
The changes that the Liberal Democratic Party is planning for Japan's constitution threaten citizens' rights, grant the government sweeping powers and, in places, verge on xenophobia, according to legal experts.
Some of the proposed changes to the constitution, introduced shortly after Imperial Japan was defeated in the second world war, are such an about-face that they indicate a desire to return to a time of authoritarian rulers and negligible internal dissent, critics of the plan say.
The Japan Civil Liberties Union warns that this was exactly the situation in the early decades of the previous century and was a direct cause of the descent into war.
"My guess is that their view of Japan is that it should be more like pre-war Japan of the early 1930s," said Masako Kamiya, a professor at the faculty of law at Gakushuin University and an expert on the legal freedom of expression.
My guess is that their view of Japan is that it should be more like pre-war Japan of the early 1930s
"I believe there are a number of LDP members who share the view that it was not such a bad time, that there were some good things in that era," she said. "That society was harmonised, young people behaved themselves and respected their elders, that order was kept as defined by the government and authorities."
The JCLU has a number of other concerns about what would be the first change to Japan's constitution since the supreme law's promulgation under Allied occupation in November 1946.