This is an abridged version of a proposal on defense issues made by a group of Japanese activists and intellectuals in response to the proposed law on emergencies in areas surrdunding Japan. A fter the end of the Cold War, the U.S. and Japanese governments took on the task of reviewing their security alliance, producing a set of new guidelines. Two things stand out in the new proposals. Japanese citizens must not allow the passage of this bill. It would be more natural, instead, to cease attempts to keep an anachronistic treaty in place by redefining it, and rather to make efforts, under Japan's initiative, to build a new peace.
Conditions are ripe for creating a new framework.
We believe that if we can follow the foreign policies outlined below, which stand in sharp contrast to the government's present stance, we will be able to open up a new future with new principles which will link us to the majority of people in the world who believe we must struggle against leaders who produce, export, import and use weapons. Developing policies based on the Preamble and Article 9 of the Constitution. There has been no apology or reckoning for Japan's colonial rule over the 22 million people who live in North Korea. This responsibility should be carried out by Japan independently, and relations with the Democratic People's Republic of Korea should be normalized. This can also become an initiative for changing the situation on the Korean Peninsula, and reducing tensions there.