About the Nationwide Network for Lawsuits on the Unconstitutionality of the New
Security Laws
1. On 1 July 2014, the government of Japan under the administration of Prime MinisterShinzo Abe passed a Cabinet Decision to allow the exercise of the right to collective selfdefense. In the early hours of 19 September 2015, the new security laws were railroaded
through the Diet in an act of historical violence. Eight years have passed since, in anunprecedented political maneuver, the Cabinet Office revised the “interpretation” of theConstitution, essentially revising Article 9 of the Constitution and opening a path to war. Thiswas done with no formal measures to officially revise the Constitution.
At a Diet session on 22 February 1983, then-Director-General of the Cabinet Legislation
Bureau Reijiro Tsunoda stated that “all [of Japan’s] administrations to date have wanted toallow Japan the right to collective self-defense; however, if they wish to make clear that Japan
has such right, I believe there is no choice but to revise the Constitution.” With this and otherstatements, his response suggested that it would be impossible for Japan to exercise theright to collective self-defense without revising Article 9 of the Constitution.
When the Abe administration’s scheme to revise the Constitution materialized through theCabinet Decision on allowing the right to collective self-defense, we started to seriously
consider whether it would be possible to file lawsuits asserting the unconstitutionality of the
new security legislation. However, we were faced with the reality that Japan’s legal world
was dominated by the view that launching a legal fight on the topic of said unconstitutionality
in Japan’s current court system could be dangerous, or that a court ruling in favor of thegovernment, judging the security legislation to be constitutional, would end up serving tofurther embolden the Abe administration. Indeed, many lawyers harbored these concerns.
Such concerns were largely justified in light of the history of Japan’s postwar judiciary. The
Constitution of Japan states that Japan is to have an independent judiciary and that the powerof judicial review lies in the judiciary. It gives courts independent of political forces theimportant role as guardians of the Constitution. Nonetheless, the courts, when faced with a“peace lawsuit” based on Article 9 of the Constitution, have consistently bowed to the politicaladministration of the time, ever since the ruling on the Sunagawa Case in 1959. Their rulings
have been made with the aim of not ruffling the feathers of those in political power. Thistendency of the judiciary to cater to those in power has been keenly visible since the new
security legislation was railroaded through the Diet in 2015. Key examples are the 2016
Supreme Court decision overruling the Tokyo High Court’s ruling partially banning late nightand early morning flights by the Japan Self-Defense Forces (SDF) at Atsugi Air Base,followed by another Supreme Court ruling the same month in favor of the national
government in its dispute with the Okinawa Prefectural Government and local residents overthe construction of a US military base in Henoko, Okinawa. This precedent caused a majorityof experienced lawyers to express doubts over whether a lawsuit on the unconstitutionalityof the new security legislation could be successful.
Nonetheless, we believed that for the judiciary, i.e., one of the three branches of government,
to let slide the passage of such blatantly unconstitutional legislation would be tantamount toan act of suicide for the three-branched system of government itself. A judiciary that would
turn a blind eye to the destruction of the peace constitution is no judiciary of a democraticnation, and would ultimately lose the trust of the people. With this conviction, we, together
with other likeminded individuals of strong moral conscience, decided to confront theunconstitutional security legislation head on in a court of law.
Former German president Richard von Weizsäcker stated, “Those who close their eyes tothe past will remain blind regarding the future.” We must not allow ourselves to forget theemergence of the Nazi regime that overturned the Weimar Republic and robbed people oftheir peace and dignity in just three short months, or the reign of terror that lasted for the next
twenty years.
2. The lawsuits on the unconstitutionality of the new security legislation started off as a selffunded grassroots effort, and it was a bumpy road. In fact, the series of struggles was far
beyond what we could have imagined. The movement started with the fumbling efforts ofindividuals volunteering to take a stand.
Against this backdrop, the first lawsuit was launched in Tokyo in 2016, followed in quick
success with 25 lawsuits filed with 22 district courts including Fukushima, Kochi, Nagasaki,
Osaka, Okayama, Saitama, Nagano, Kanagawa, Hiroshima, Fukuoka, Kyoto, Yamaguchi,Oita, Sapporo, Miyazaki, Gunma, Kushiro, Kagoshima, Okinawa, Yamanashi, and Aichi, inthat order. The suits were launched by 7,699 plaintiffs represented by 1,685 attorneys.
One of the plaintiffs in the Aichi lawsuit was Nobel Prize-wining physicist Toshihide Maskawa,professor emeritus at Kyoto University. Dr. Maskawa sent the following message to thenation: “Let us protect Article 9 of the Constitution. No matter how small a single voice, when
our voices come together they will be loud. If we wait until the country becomes able to wage

war, it will be too late. If we wait until war starts, it will be too late. That is why we must protect
Article 9 of the Constitution. I would be most pleased to see Article 9 of the Constitution
granted the Nobel Peace Prize.” With renewed conviction, we established the Nationwide
Network for Lawsuits on the Unconstitutionality of the New Security Legislation in a bid todraw on the experience of likeminded individuals nationwide, deepen our ties with them, andopen up new prospects for victory in our fight.
3. In our view, the deepest significance of the lawsuits on the unconstitutionality of thesecurity legislation lies in affirming in a court of law our unshakeable belief that we must neverrepeat the dark era of war experienced 81 years ago. Japan entered into World War II andengaged in a war of aggression, robbing more than 20 million people in Asia of their lives. InJapan alone, more than 3.1 million people were killed, with the war culminating in the atomic
bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the bombing of Tokyo. We must engrave in ourhearts the cries of anguish of those upon whom this war brought unspeakable tragedy.
Throughout Japan are spreading movements of those who refuse to accept the policies
pushed forward by the deceitful and irresponsible Abe administration and the Suga andKishida administrations that followed him. We consider the lawsuits on the unconstitutionalityof the security legislation to be a kind of smoke signal with strong ties to these nationwide
movements aimed at recovering Japan’s constitutionalism and intelligence. In our view, webear a historical responsibility to hold this torch high and move forth. The second significanceof our lawsuits is their purpose of fundamentally questioning Japan’s judiciary’s tendency tomeekly acquiesce to government policy without question, and to wake up individual judges
across Japan to their role as those responsible for serving as one of the three independent
branches of government. We also considered it necessary to question the negative attitude
of some attorneys toward allowing the courts to rule on the security legislation. While we
acknowledge some validity to the view that under the current system there is no choice but
for the judiciary to attempt to hold on to some semblance of independence while practicing
self-restraint in the face of pressure, continued silent acceptance of such reality would
ultimately lead to Japan’s three-branched system of government collapsing from its
foundations. The lawsuits on the unconstitutionality of the security legislation fundamentally
call into question whether the independence of the courts whose job it is to uphold theConstitution, and the three-branched system of government itself, are functioning. Moreover,
we held a strong conviction that Japan’s people have the strength to push back against thegovernment’s reckless pursuit of turning Japan into a nation that can wage war, and we felt
we had a responsibility to bring cohesion to that strength such that it can be wielded
effectively. We believe we must fight to harness deep anxieties about peace as well as anger

about poverty, discrimination, and disparity, bring together many people’s hearts as one, andfight against autocratic politics that continues to ignore human dignity and human rights.
4. Lawyers were central to the launch of the lawsuits on the unconstitutionality of the newsecurity legislation. However, the many people who supported the cause and joined us asplaintiffs are being harmed by the security legislation in ways we, the lawyers who started
the movement, could not have imagined. Their suffering is witnessed in the testimony they
have given in the court proceedings. Some were direct victims of air raids and the atomic
bombings during the war; others lost members of their family in the war. They have lived in
the postwar era with memories of these tragedies imprinted in their hearts. The threat ofbeing draw into war again as a result of the new security legislation reignites the fears thatstill haunt them. It also anguishes them that should Japan go to war once again it would
signify a failure on their part to keep the promises they had made to those they lost in thewar. These possibilities are agonizing for those who experienced the last war. Through theselawsuits, we also learned of the powerful role Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution has
played overseas as a symbol of peace. During the Iran-Iraq war, when every ship was subject
to attack, a Japanese ship flying the Japanese national flag made it through the Persian Gulf
unscathed. We heard the plaintive appeals of former members of the Japan Self-Defense
Forces and their families. We were painfully reminded of the fact that postwar Japan’s
pacifism existed because of the sacrifice of the people of Okinawa. These experiences madeus recognize the magnitude of what we have to lose. We realized that this critical issue ofhuman dignity and peace must not be compartmentalized as the purview of the relatively
small group of people involved in the lawsuits. Rather, it must be shared broadly and deeply
with everyone in Japan. We must come together to think about what kind of country we want
Japan to be going forward.
More than 300 plaintiffs gave statements in the 25 lawsuits nationwide. 150 plaintiffs
underwent investigation in court. These included survivors of the atomic bombings and Tokyo
air bombings, people living beside military bases, people living with disabilities, nuclear
engineers, former Self-Defense Force personnel, aircraft commanders, railway workers,
journalists, scholars of constitutional law, and educational scholars. Their raw testimonies
spoke keenly of the frightful terror of war and of their fears about the government pushing
forward with preparation to institute tragic policies once again. Michiko Muta, a survivor ofthe atomic bombing of Nagasaki 78 years ago, gave the following testimony at the TokyoDistrict Court: “We still cannot forget the terror of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, which left
150,000 people dead or injured in an instant. I want Nagasaki to be the last place ever to besubjected to the suffering continuously inflicted on us by war and nuclear weapons.”
The original leader of the plaintiffs in the lawsuit lodged at the Nagasaki District Court was
Sumiteru Taniguchi, chair of the Nagasaki Council of A-bomb Survivors, who passed awayon 30 August 2017. Mr. Taniguchi made the following statement at the Nagasaki Peace
Memorial Ceremony on 9 August 2015. A victim of the atomic bombing, Mr. Taniguchi was
known as “the boy with the red back” because of a photograph of the extensive injury to hisback. His whole body having been exposed to damage from the bomb, Mr. Taniguchi spoke
forcefully of the inhumanity of the atomic bomb until the end of his days.
“After the war, Japan’s Constitution was written promising to the world that Japan would neveragain wage war or carry weapons. However, the government is now pushing acceptance ofthe right to collective self-defense on us. It is promoting revision of the Constitution and trying
to bring us backwards to the era of war. The security legislation being pushed by thegovernment will lead to war. With this legislation the government is attempting to undo all of
the work many people have accomplished in our movement opposing war and endeavoring
to abolish nuclear weapons founded on our experience of the atomic bomb and our wishes
for peace. This cannot be tolerated.”
On his visit to Nagasaki and Hiroshima in 2019, Pope Francis sent delivered a speech entitl
ed &apos;Appeal for Peace&apos, quoting the following message which Pope John Paul II
had given: “War is the work of man. War is the destruction of human life. War is death.” It isabsolutely clear that war is the ultimate violation of human rights violation, causing the mas
sacre of millions of people, and inevitably entailing severe violence, discrimination, and suppression of free speech. And we, the Japanese, the people of Japan have managed for more than 70 years since the end of World War II, to prevent another war from breaking out,
block off the path to another war for more than 70 years since the end of World War II under Article 9 of the Constitution, we believe. We must not forget these facts. Today, we are continuing our legal battle, asserting the unconstitutionality of the new securityrelated legislation, with acute awareness of the importance of this mission.