Japan Press Weekly

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2016 January 6 - 12 TOP3 [POLITICS]

Religious agency conducts signature drive misleading public into supporting abolition of pacifist Article 9

It has come to light that a religious corporation, the Tokyo Shrine Agency, during the New Year’s holiday period collected signatures from shrine visitors in support of constitutional revision while concealing its true aim of abolishing the war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution.

Seeking to defeat the pacifist, democratic Constitution, a signature-collection campaign has been carried out by a major constitutional revisionists’ group, many of whose members belong to the rightist Japan Conference (Nippon Kaigi), with the aim of gathering 10 million signatures. The group in its petition provided its goal in detail: recognizing the Japanese Self-Defense Forces in Article 9, inserting an emergency provision into the Constitution, and relaxing requirements for constitutional revision under Article 96.

The shrine agency, which has close ties with the Nippon Kaigi, in its signatures drive used its own petition which only calls for revising “contents of the Constitution”. The agency supposedly tried to mislead shrine visitors into supporting constitutional revision in general terms by hiding the truth that it shares the same goal as the revisionists’ group of undermining of Article 9.

In response to an Akahata inquiry, a public relations official of the agency took a so-what attitude and said that the agency only cooperated with the national association of shrines.

Past related articles:
> Abe seeks to add emergency clause to Constitution [January 5, 2016]
> Abe plans to initiate constitutional revision after 2016 Upper House election [February 6, 2015]