The big headlines in Japanese newspapers now are about the kidnapping of three Japanese in Iraq. They were released on April 15, 2004, but before that Al Jazeera television aired a videotape showing them–one was a woman–being held by a group calling itself the Saraya al-Mujahedeen (Mujahedeen Brigades). The group declared:

We tell you that three of your children have fallen prisoner in our hands and we give you two options–withdraw your forces from our country and go home or we will burn them alive and feed them to the fighters.

That report has exploded a national debate in Japan over the rarely mentioned Article 9 of the 1946 Japanese Constitution and whether it should be repealed. Here’s the background of a debate whose outcome could affect all of Asia:

With the defeat of Japan in World War II, the U.S. was determined to demilitarize the country so that it could never again go to war. The Occupation approved Article 9, which reads:

(1) Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes.
(2) In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.

The idea for Article 9 was actually that of a Japanese statesman, then-Prime Minister Kijuro Shidehara. He suggested the idea of a pacifist Japan to General Douglas MacArthur, who agreed that it should be incorporated into the new constitution. In a few years, however, as the Cold War went into high gear, the U.S. urged the Japanese government to create a military organization. Japan did so, and called the organization the Self Defense Force.

Opponents of the SDP argue that Article 9 prohibits not only war as a national policy but the creation of any kind of military force as well. The ruling LDP, however, has held that a defensive force was permissible under Article 9. The LDP government was pressured unsuccessfully to ship troops to the first Gulf War against Iraq and to contribute troops to United Nations peacekeeping missions. In 1992 it passed a law allowing a maximum of 2000 Japanese troops to serve in U.N. peacekeeping missions. Court challenges against the constitutional legality of the Self Defense Force have failed.

Now, however, the kidnapping of three Japanese citizens–along with the refusal of the government to withdraw its roughly 500 troops from the Coalition forces in Iraq–has revealed that Article 9 stands in the way of serious war-making if and when necessary. So the government and its Diet majority believe. But the Left is powerful in Japan and a pacifist spirit abounds. The future of Article 9 is at stake. Its repeal would dramatically affect the balance of military power in Asia. Anything that smacks of Japanese remilitarization would certainly be regarded by China and South Korea as a threat to their security. Stay tuned.

–Arnold Beichman, a Hoover Institution research fellow, is a columnist for the Washington Times.