Abe Is Said to Have Plans to Revise Pacifist Charter
By MARTIN FACKLER

TOKYO — Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has said that he wants to start the process of revising Japan’s Constitution as early as next year, a senior lawmaker in his party said Thursday, giving the clearest indication yet that the Japanese leader will seek to change a document that has undergirded the country’s postwar pacifism.

Mr. Abe told Hajime Funada, the leader of a group of Liberal Democratic Party lawmakers, on Wednesday that the best time to begin the difficult political task of amending the Constitution would be after elections for the upper house of Parliament, scheduled for the summer of 2016, Mr. Funada said. Mr. Funada’s comments, which were originally reported by two Japanese newspapers, The Asahi Shimbun and The Sankei Shimbun, were later confirmed by his political secretary, Miki Mori.

When Mr. Funada asked the prime minister whether the best time for starting the revision process would be after the upper house elections, Mr. Abe answered, “That would be common sense,” according to Mr. Mori.

According to Mr. Mori, Mr. Abe did not specifically say that he wanted to rewrite Article 9 of the Constitution, which prohibits the use of armed force in resolving international disputes. But this week, Mr. Abe told Parliament that he wanted to make that change in order to strengthen Japan’s hand in responding to threats like the Islamic State militant group, which killed two Japanese hostages last month.

The top government spokesman, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga, confirmed at a news briefing on Thursday that Mr. Abe had met with Mr. Funada and that the two had agreed that more effort was needed to win public support for constitutional change.

“The two shared the opinion that time will be needed to promote a fuller debate about this,” Mr. Suga said. “I think this was not meant as a concrete deadline so much as agreeing that more public debate was needed, and that there is more effort to be done to achieve this.”

The Constitution, which also prohibits Japan from possessing the means of war, was written by American occupiers after World War II to prevent the defeated nation from ever again engaging in militarist expansion. The document proved so popular among Japan’s war-weary people that it has never been amended.

Changing it would require the approval of two-thirds of Parliament, followed by majority support in a public referendum. With its landslide victory in December elections, Mr. Abe’s party is now close to mustering enough seats in the lower house to meet that threshold, but it still falls short in the upper house. A strong showing in next year’s elections could change that.

Changing Article 9 would be sure to anger China as well as South Korea. Both countries have frequently accused Japan of failing to come to terms with its past aggression.

Before becoming prime minister two years ago, Mr. Abe advocated rewriting the Constitution to allow a full-fledged military, saying that the document no longer reflected the realities that a democratic Japan faced in a rapidly changing world. But after taking office, Mr. Abe initially said little about constitutional revision, perhaps mindful of opinion polls consistently showing that a majority of Japanese still opposed changes that could make it easier to embroil their nation in foreign wars.

But Mr. Abe has seized on the murders of the Japanese hostages to make some of his strongest appeals yet for unshackling the nation’s military. Saying Japan was unable to save the hostages, he has called for easing restrictions on its purely defensive armed forces to allow them to conduct rescue missions, evacuations and other overseas operations to protect Japanese nationals.

The hostages, Kenji Goto, a journalist, and Haruna Yukawa, an adventurer, were beheaded a week apart by the Islamic State, a militant group in Syria and Iraq that had demanded a $200 million ransom for their release. The murders outraged and sickened Japan, which had seen itself as largely immune to the sort of violence faced by the United States and other nations that have been involved militarily in the Middle East. Since 1945, Japan has adhered to a peaceful brand of diplomacy that has seen it become a major donor of economic and humanitarian aid to the Middle East and elsewhere.

It remains unclear whether the shock of the killings will swing the Japanese public in favor of Mr. Abe’s harder line. Since the murders, opposition politicians have stepped up attacks on the prime minister, accusing him of provoking the Islamic State by allying Japan more closely with the United States-led efforts to destroy the militant group. Just days before the ransom demand appeared, Mr. Abe pledged $200 million in nonmilitary aid to countries in the region confronting the Islamic State.

However, on Thursday, the lower house of Parliament unanimously adopted a resolution condemning the killings and calling for increased coordination with the global community to combat terrorism.

安倍：最快明夏參院選後修憲

日本首相安倍晉三四日在官邸與日本眾議員兼自民黨憲法修改推進總部長船田元等人會談，安倍表示最快明年夏季參院選舉後展開修憲程序。紐約時報指出，這是安倍迄今對準備動手修憲最明確的宣示。

日本朝日新聞及產經新聞都引述船田元的談話，報導安倍明年將展開修憲這項困難的政治工作。安倍未言明想修改憲法的哪個部分，但他日前曾在國會表示，考量一月人質事件，他有意修改禁止日本以武力解決國際爭端的憲法第九條，擴大自衛隊任務，保護國民生命財產，包括獲得當事國同意後，可執行解救日僑任務。

日本內閣官房長官菅義偉五日證實安倍曾與船田會面，雙方同意努力爭取民意支持修憲，並推動更全面的修憲辯論。

日本在二戰後實施由美國占領軍擬訂的憲法，第九條規定日本永遠放棄戰爭、不設軍隊也沒有宣戰權，防止戰敗的日本再度進行軍國主義式擴張。厭戰的日本民眾非常支持這部「和平憲法」，實施至今從未修改。

在日本，修憲必須獲得三分之二國會議員同意，並在公民投票中獲得過半數支持。安倍所屬的自民黨在去年眾院選舉大勝，該黨在眾院的席次已逼近同意修憲的門檻，但在參院掌握的席次仍不足。明年參院選舉自民黨若大勝，可望改變此局勢。

日本修改憲法第九條勢將惹怒中國大陸和南韓，中韓兩國譴責日本並未徹底悔悟過去的侵略。

安倍任首相前即以不合時宜為由推動修憲，就任後礙於民意反對鮮少提及此事，但日本人質遭「伊斯蘭國」殺害事件，讓安倍趁勢大推修憲，他表示憲法限制讓日本無法解救海外人質，呼籲修憲讓自衛隊執行救援、撤離僑民等任務。

人質事件是否讓日本民意轉向支持修憲，有待觀察，但該事件凝聚了日本人對宗教狂熱組織的憤怒。日本眾院五日強烈譴責恐怖行為，並呼籲政府積極參與反恐活動。

原文參照：
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/02/06/world/asia/abe-wants-to-revise-pacifist-constitution-as-early-as-2016-ally-says.html

紐約時報中文版翻譯：
http://cn.nytimes.com/asia-pacific/20150206/c06japan/zh-hant/

2015-02-06．聯合報．A15．國際．編譯陳韻涵