Japan Press Weekly

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2009 February 11 - 17 [HISTORY]

Rallies held against ‘National Foundation Day’

On “National Foundation Day” on February 11, rallies in opposition to designating the day as a national holiday took place in major cities.

Many of the rallies also pledged to defend the Constitution and block the move to justify Japan’s past war of aggression done by former Air Self-Defense Force Chief of Staff Gen Tamogami Toshio.

In Yokohama City, about 130 people took part in a rally against National Foundation Day established in 1967 based on an imperial family-related mythical creation of the country.

This is an annual rally held by an organizing committee involving Christian organizations and labor unions in Kanagawa Prefecture claiming that the national holiday is historically groundless and in violation of the constitutional principle that sovereign rights rest with the people.

In Tokyo, historians’ groups and Tokyo’s public school teachers union jointly hosted a rally which was attended by about 300 people.

Aichi University Professor Kobayashi Takeshi gave a lecture on the task to block the SDF overseas dispatch and establish the right to live in peace.

Kobayashi stressed the significance of the Nagoya District Court’s decision last April which ruled that the SDF dispatch to Iraq is unconstitutional. He said that since the ruling acknowledged the right to live in peace as the people’s constitutional right, it has enabled citizens to claim in court that SDF operations in Somalia and Afghanistan are in violation of that right. The effort to create a Japan where the Constitution is fully made use of has been strengthened and now is “about to bear fruit,” he said.

The rally adopted a resolution calling for the effort to be developed to create the people’s majority in opposition to constitutional revision.