the article renouncing militarism 日本憲法之創立與捍衛

觀點

日本的年輕人，請捍衛你們的憲法

納斯里娜·阿齊米 2012年12月21日

John Dominis/Time Life Pictures, via Getty Images

日本憲法。

廣島
1945年的平安夜，貝雅特·西洛塔(Beate Sirota)抵達東京郊外的厚木機場，在戰爭期間遭到猛烈轟炸的東京當時一片廢墟。精神飽滿、老成練達的西洛塔當時22歲，是一名歸化的美國公民，生於 維也納、在日本長大，父母是烏克蘭人。她在近6年後“回家”，成為駐日盟軍最高司令道格拉斯·麥克阿瑟上將(Douglas MacArthur)的首名女性文職幕僚。

兩個月後，西洛塔加入麥克阿瑟設立的起草委員會，重修《日本國憲法》(Constitution of Japan)。這是《波茨坦公告》(Potsdam Declaration)中隱含的要求，也是對戰爭厭煩的多數日本民眾的渴望——許多日本人相信，1890年的《明治憲法》(Meiji Constitution)是他們國家魯莽且災難性的軍國主義的根源之一。

一開始，美國人並沒有打算主導起草憲法的努力。不過，日本政府的兩次嘗試都可悲地失敗了。保守派精英對現有的文本進行小修小補；而《每日新聞》 (Mainichi)發現的一份草案成為大眾的笑柄。速度至關重要：其他一些戰勝國，尤其是蘇聯，熱衷於從憲法上廢除日本的皇權制度。而麥克阿瑟認為，此 舉可能導致混亂。

因此，麥克阿瑟求助於司令部的政府部門。在盟軍佔領的最初幾個月里，這裡的幕僚有許多是羅斯福新政時期的年輕理想主義者和知識分子。西洛塔是民權小 組委員會成員，對1946年2月那狂熱的一周有着生動的記憶。當時，她對東京的熟悉、戰爭年代磨練的研究技巧和流利的日語被證明是無價之寶。

她徵用了一輛吉普車，跑遍東京殘存的圖書館，搜集各種憲法文本，包括魏瑪共和國、法國、斯堪的納維亞國家、蘇聯的憲法，當然還有《美國憲法》 (U.S. Constitution)和《獨立宣言》(Declaration of Independence)。她常常引用作家山下清泉(James Miki)的話說，日本憲法是用“歷史的智慧”寫就的。

這一憲法如今受到了挑戰。周日，日本選民將又一次前往投票站（本文最初發表於2012年12月15日——編注）。他們將決定多麼嚴厲地懲罰民主黨 (Democratic Party of Japan)，該黨執政三年期間經濟表現糟糕，而2011年3月發生的災難性的地震、海嘯和福島核事故，加劇了日本經濟困境。

曾在戰後大部分時間裡統治日本的自民黨(Liberal Democratic Party)急於再度執政。一些抱有民族主義野心的知名和不知名的政治人物成立新的政黨，為選舉結果帶來更多變數。

日本面臨各項迫在眉睫的挑戰。該國經濟仍然死氣沉沉。近期與中國的領土爭端致使一些日企蒙受損失。擬議中的亞太自由貿易協定——跨太平洋夥伴關係 (Trans-Pacific Partnership)在日本國內引發尖銳對立的態度。此外，日本仍在艱難應對福島核事故的後果，日本未來的能源政策尚不明朗。

在此緊要關頭，重修憲法的呼聲越來越高，這是右翼政黨長期追求的目標。兩個主要反對黨的領導人——安倍晉三(Shinzo Abe)和石原慎太郎(Shintaro Ishihara)——都宣稱修訂憲法是重點任務。我在廣島的許多朋友擔心，他們可能會利用修訂憲法的機會放棄和平條款，開啟軍事化甚至發展核武的大門。

“美國人編寫”的憲法——石原慎太郎最近形容其為“醜陋的”——是掩蓋日本面臨緊迫挑戰、轉移人們注意力的現成的替罪羊。但是避免就此展開辯論可能適得其反。用學者瀧井一博(Takii Kazuhiro)的話說，一部憲法不僅僅是一份法律文件，它還是“國家的形態”。

《日本國憲法》第9條規定，日本“永遠放棄以國權發動的戰爭、武力威脅或武力行使作為解決國際爭端的手段”。這並沒有阻止日本創建強大的自衛隊，所 以人們有理由提出這個問題：如果日本在憲法上允許放手建設正規化的軍隊，日本還能取得哪些“成就”？數以千計的日本青年會不會已在朝鮮戰爭、越南戰爭或者 近年的伊拉克和阿富汗戰爭中喪生？

不僅如此。古關彰一(Shoichi Koseki)在其《日本戰後憲法的誕生》(Birth of Japan’s Postwar Constitution)一書中寫道，日本憲法包含了一些當時最先進的民權條款——包括由西洛塔起草的第24條，該條在日本歷史上首次把平等權利賦予該 國一半人口——女性。

學者們還指出，從一開始，起草人員就深受日本人影響。一共有12個小組（包括改革派政黨和一個由日本先進知識分子設立的憲法研究協會）提交了草案。

在長達32小時的馬拉松式的翻譯討論會上，日本政府對最終草案進行了激烈的協商，立法機構對草案條款進行了數月的辯論。新的憲法顯然響應了日本民眾的渴望。否則它幾乎不可能歷經65年而保持不變。

如今，西洛塔是起草委員會中唯一還在世的成員。麥克阿瑟的年代過去後，她擔任日本協會(Japan Society)和亞洲協會(Asia Society)表演藝術部門的負責人。她對日本的熱愛依舊未變，日本女性也回報了她的這份熱愛。西洛塔心懷真正經歷了戰爭的那一代人的理想主義，她在自 己的回憶錄中寫道，“只有廢除軍國主義那一條，才真正打動了那些遭受了慘重損失的人們的心靈。”

這部憲法讓日本經歷了60多年的和平和繁榮，儘管如此，只要有政客把它貶稱為外國人強加給日本的東西，重修憲法的壓力就會存在。

若日本開始重修憲法，我希望那些對其獨特性感到自豪的數百萬日本民眾能站起來維護它。全國性的辯論很可能促動更深層的情緒和思考，特別是在年輕人中間，提醒他們切勿把他們的和平和他們的民主當成想當然的事，動員他們為自己國家的未來形態而戰。

納斯里娜·阿齊米(Nassrine Azimi)是日本廣島聯合國訓練研究所(United Nations Institute for Training and Research)的高級顧問。她即將完成一本名為《貝雅特·西洛塔·戈登與日本憲法》(Beate Sirota Gordon and the Constitution of Japan)的著作。
翻譯：陶夢縈、黃錚、許欣

Op-Ed Contributor

Constitutionally Sound

By NASSRINE AZIMI December 21, 2012

 

Hiroshima
ON Christmas Eve 1945, Beate Sirota, a spirited and worldly 22-year-old naturalized American, born in Vienna of Ukrainian parents and raised in Japan, landed at Atsugi airport on the outskirts of the bombed-out rubble of Tokyo. She was returning “home” after almost six years, the first female civilian staff member of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, Gen. Douglas MacArthur.
Two months later Sirota became part of the drafting committee MacArthur set up to rewrite the Constitution of Japan. This had been implicit in the Potsdam Declaration and longed for by the majority of war-weary Japanese, many of whom believed the Meiji Constitution of 1890 to be one cause of their country’s reckless and disastrous militarism.
Initially the Americans had not intended to lead the drafting effort. Two attempts by the Japanese government, however, failed abjectly — the conservative elite merely tinkering with the existing text, and one draft, unearthed by the Mainichi newspaper, becoming the laughing stock of the general public. Timing was of the essence: other war victors, especially the Soviets, were keen to constitutionally abolish the imperial system, a move MacArthur believed could unleash chaos.
So the general turned to his command’s government section, staffed in those first months of the occupation by many young idealists and intellectuals from Roosevelt’s New Deal era. Sirota was part of the subcommittee on civil rights and vividly recalls that feverish week in February 1946, when her familiarity with Tokyo, her research skills honed during the war years and her fluency in Japanese proved invaluable.
She commandeered a jeep and visited all the libraries still standing in Tokyo to collect constitutional texts — including those of the Weimar Republic, France, the Scandinavian countries, the Soviet Union and of course the U.S. Constitution and Declaration of Independence. She often quotes the writer James Miki, who has said that the Japanese Constitution was written by “the wisdom of history.”
That Constitution is now being challenged. On Sunday Japanese voters are again heading to the polls. They will decide how severely to punish the ruling Democratic Party of Japan, after little more than three years, for its anemic performance on the economy, worsened by the catastrophic earthquake, tsunami and nuclear accident in Fukushima in March 2011.
The Liberal Democratic Party, which ruled Japan for most of the postwar era, is impatient to return to power. A number of known and unknown politicians with national ambitions have emerged to form new parties, adding more uncertainty to the outcome.
Urgent challenges face the country. Its economy remains moribund. Business has suffered as a consequence of recent territorial disputes with China. The Trans-Pacific Partnership, a proposed Asia-Pacific free trade agreement, has turned deeply divisive. And the country still struggles with the consequences of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. Japan’s future energy policy remains unknown.
In the midst of all this, calls for rewriting the Constitution, long a cause of the right, are getting louder. Both Shinzo Abe and Shintaro Ishihara, leaders of the two main opposition parties, have declared constitutional revision a priority. Many of my friends in Hiroshima fear that this will be used to discard Japan’s peace clause, opening the possibility of militarization and even nuclear arms.
The “American-written” Constitution — recently labeled by Ishihara as “ugly” — is a convenient scapegoat for and distraction from the country’s pressing challenges. But avoiding debate about it might be counterproductive. A Constitution, in the words of the scholar Takii Kazuhiro, is not just a legal document, but the very “shape of the nation.”
Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution forever renounces war “as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.” This has not hindered the creation of the powerful Self-Defense Forces, so it is fair to ask what more Japan could have accomplished with a military carte blanche. Could thousands of Japanese youth have perished in the Korean War, or in Vietnam, or more recently in Iraq and Afghanistan?
That is not all. Shoichi Koseki, in his book “Birth of Japan’s Postwar Constitution,” wrote that the Constitution contained some of the most advanced civil rights clauses of the time — including Article 24, drafted by Sirota, which for the first time in Japanese history articulated equal rights for half of the country’s population — the women.
Scholars also note that from inception, the drafters were deeply influenced by the Japanese themselves. Twelve groups, including reformist political parties and a constitutional research association set up by some of Japan’s leading intellectuals, submitted proposals.
The final draft was negotiated fiercely by the Japanese government in a marathon 32-hour translation session, and the text was debated for months by the legislature. The new Constitution clearly responded to the longings of the Japanese themselves. Otherwise it could hardly have survived unchanged for 65 years.
Sirota is now the last living member of the drafting team. After the MacArthur years she served as director of performing arts of the Japan Society and of Asia Society. Her love for Japan remains intact, and it is returned by Japanese women. Imbued with the idealism of a generation that actually experienced war, Sirota wrote in her memoirs, “Only the article renouncing militarism really touched the hearts of people who had suffered such devastating losses.”
Despite the fact that the Constitution has enabled Japan to live for more than six decades in peace and prosperity, so long as there are politicians who disdain it as the work of foreigners there will be pressure to rewrite it.
When that happens, it is my hope that millions of Japanese, rightly proud of its uniqueness, will rise to its defense. A national debate could well stir deeper sentiments and reflections, especially among young people, reminding them never to take their peace and their democracy for granted, rallying them to fight for the future shape of their nation.

Nassrine Azimi, a senior adviser at the United Nations Institute for Training and Research in Hiroshima, is finishing a book on Beate Sirota Gordon and the Constitution of Japan.