Nonsensical statement: 'Offer your life for your country' -- Akahata editorial, March 1Liberal Democratic Party and Democratic Party members of the Diet has formed the "Committee for Promotion of the Revision of the Fundamental Law of Education" aimed at an adverse revision to the law.
Mori Yoshiro is an adviser to the Committee. In May 2000, Mori, prime minister at the time, made a controversial statement that Japan is a "divine nation" with the emperor at its center and that the public must accept that fact.
The same logic as the defunct 'Imperial Rescript on Education'
Nishimura Shingo, DPJ member of the House of Representatives, followed Mori when he spoke as follows at the committee's inaugural assembly:
"We need to educate children who will never hesitate to sacrifice themselves for the country. We must teach them that we live today thanks to our predecessors who gave their lives to the country.
We must increase our efforts to make children clearly aware of the need for a national military. This is the way to realize a true national education."
Note: Nishimura had close connections with a rightist organization which threatened with guns some politicians and a North Korea-related organization in Japan.
This is an outrageous argument attempting to remake school children so that they will voluntarily die for their country. How can such unnecessary deaths be tolerated in a democratic society? We can never condone such an anachronistic argument.
The original aim of education must be to help school children learn the pleasures of life, cultivating warm human relations as well as knowledge of society and nature.
This is the ideal called for by the Fundamental Law of Education which stipulates, "Education shall aim at the full development of personality."
However, Nishimura's statement is just a repeat of the old Imperial Rescript on Education that dragged people into offering their lives in order to defend the emperor in the event of war as a supreme obligatory ethic.
What were the results of the militarist education in prewar days giving top priority to the country's destiny in disregard of people's lives? A handbook that explained the Fundamental Law of Education was compiled by the Ministry of Education when the Fundamental Law of Education was promulgated on March 31, 1947. The handbook states as follows:
"The government of the time conducted education in disregard of universal political morality which transcended the state, by regarding the state as the sole standard of values. As a result, the ideas of giving top priority to the fate of the nation and the use of armed forces to settle international disputes filtered into the curriculum.
"Such education constituted one of the great causes of the disaster of the latest war that resulted in fighting with the rest of the world" (Source: 'Handbook of the Fundamental Law of Education').
What we cannot overlook is that Nishimura's statement isn't a standout among those who aim for an adverse revision of the Constitution and the law concerning education.
What 'national military' means
Prime Minister Koizumi Jun'ichiro says, "It's better to specify the Self-Defense Forces as a 'national military' in the Constitution by revising Article 9." But his argument has something in common with the "people's army" that Nishimura defines.
Specifying "national military" in the Constitution means imposing a military service on the people as literally "people's army", and will lead to introduction of a draft system. Under such an occasion, the people won't merely be urged to join the service as 'obligation,' but education will be oriented as a nation's important task to educate many people who would "sacrifice their lives for the sake of the country."
The Koizumi government has already enforced dispatch of the Self-Defense Forces to Iraq in line with the United States strategy, and is now preparing to "formulate" contingency legislation designed to mobilize the people into U.S. wars. The legislation is intended to blatantly urge the people to "sacrifice their lives." Behind these moves are the ruling parties' persistent schemes to have the phrase "patriotism" specified in the Constitution and the education law. Will the Democratic Party of Japan lend a helping hand to the ruling parties in this respect? (end)