LDP secretary general's obsession - Akahata 'Current' column, May 17

"The parties that voted against are still obsessed about outdated ideas."

This is what Yamasaki Taku, Liberal Democratic Party secretary general stated after railroading the contingency-related bills through the House of Representatives.

Oh, wait a minute, Mr. Yamasaki, you should know that your party has been desperately attempting to get contingency legislation passed for 40 years.

In 1963, the Self-Defense Forces had a secret study, the "Three-arrow Operations" aimed at enacting 87 wartime laws that would be invoked in the event of a second Korean War.

In 1965, when this secret study was revealed, the government in an attempt to allay public concerns, explained that it was just a study by a military group, not a government study.

In 1978, Fukuda Takeo, prime minister at the time, instructed the Defense Agency to speed up the study of war contingency legislation. Unlike the "Three-arrow Study", it publicly aimed for establishing contingency laws.

But the attempt was thwarted by strong public criticism.

Advocates of contingency laws used to say that such legislation was needed to deal with outside "threats".

But the world settings have changed in the last 40 years.

Japan under the Fukuda Cabinet concluded a peace and friendship treaty with China.

The biggest threats are gone because of the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Changes are now evident also in the Korean Peninsula.

When Mr. Yamasaki and other ruling government officials were rushing to get the contingency bills passed through the Lower House, South Korean President Roh Moo Hyun was in Washington, D.C. to call for a peaceful solution to North Korea's nuclear development problem.

In South Korea, 30 National Assembly members sent a letter to every member of the Japanese Diet warning that "the contingency legislation runs counter to the constitutional spirit of peace."

All this shows that Mr. Yamasaki, who continues to say that this constitutional spirit is "outdated", is himself "outdated" because of his inability to set himself free from the firm belief that Japan's cooperation in U.S. wars means everything. (end)