Sixty-one years have passed since the Japanese Constitution was implemented in 1947. A movement to revise the Constitution, in particular its Article 9, is gathering strength in response to criticism that the Constitution is a vestige of the period of the Allied Occupation, forced upon Japan by the officials of the Allied forces, and also in response to pressure from inside and out for the Japanese Self-Defense Forces to contribute even more to the war on terrorism. At the root of the Japanese people's defense of their pacifist Constitution, until now, in spite of these various pressures, has been a deep self-examination centering on Japan's prewar militarism and of the unspeakable horrors of its wartime experience. Moreover, many of the Americans who came to Japan immediately after the war to implement the Occupation policies sincerely wanted to make Japan into a better country. Among them were anti-war, pacifist Quakers such as Dr. Hugh Borton, who helped to draft the new Constitution. On the basis of their draft, the pacifist Constitution that determined that Japan would neither wage war nor bear arms was joyfully accepted by the people of the time, who had had their fill of the brutality of war. Upon rereading the text of this document, I believe that the Japanese Constitution is an ideal constitution, one that will go down in the history of the human race. It may have been received from others, forced upon us, but in my considered opinion a good thing is a good thing.

From the 1931 Manchurian Incident (the act of sabotage that led to the Japanese occupation of Manchuria) through the Pacific War to the signing of the Potsdam Declaration and Japan's defeat, Japan was continuously at war for fifteen years. I was born in 1931; the first fifteen years of my up-bringing, until I was in the ninth grade, were either during war or under the clouds of war. The schools had a completely militaristic curriculum; our teachers taught us that Japan was a "divine land" where all the gods and goddesses of heaven and earth abide, that the Emperor reigned as the incarnate divinity who stood at the top of these gods, and that the war was a "holy war" to overthrow the brutal United States and Britain and bring about peace in the world. We accepted all this on faith. In fact, however, Japan invaded other Asian nations in the name of the "holy war," taking many precious lives; the Japanese people themselves were the victims of repeated air raids and had atomic bombs dropped on them twice, suffering destruction on an unprecedented scale. After the predawn Tokyo air raid that occurred on March 10, 1945, in which approximately 100,000 lives were sacrificed in one night in a massive incendiary attack, we couldn't find an aunt who lived in an area that was destroyed by fire. I walked the fire-ravaged area for three days, peering at the faces of burnt corpses. My aunt was never found, so the day of the air raid became the anniversary of her death.

Today, as a Japanese Buddhist, I believe as follows: The foremost precept that a Buddhist must abide by is the precept of taking no life. The largest extent of killing happens during war. The optimum situation for having no wars is to not have weapons. Buddhists, for whom the foremost precept is not to kill, should not have weapons. Even if there were to be a war and an enemy were to attack us, it would be better to be killed than to survive by killing others (in other words, by violating the precept of taking no life). If asked if this would still be preferable even if our nation were to be overthrown as a result, my reply would be that even if the country were to be overthrown as a result of not killing, that cannot be avoided. This is why we must hold fast to the spirit of the Constitution's Article 9. To hold fast to the spirit of Article 9, we must do all that we can to make true peace possible.

"Thou shall not kill" is a precept that is not just Buddhist; it has been common to many religions since ancient times. Nonetheless, looking at the international situation these days, it seems that actions that result in the sacrifice of the lives of others are being coldly taken in the name of eradicating terrorism and protecting peace. What is more, these actions are undeniably happening against the background of a competition for underground resources. The justification of bearing arms and killing people in the name of peace, a contradiction that was put forth earlier in prewar Japan as well, is a contradiction that Japanese Buddhists must not allow. To avoid the contradiction, it is the duty of Japanese Buddhists to stand firmly by Article 9 of the Constitution.