Japan’s constitutional revision debate in the light of domestic and regional developments

Abstract

The biggest factor that makes the Japanese constitution special is its pacifist article which blocks Japanese army to be deployed in overseas. This constitution, which was written during the American invasion, has not been changed for 70 years. Until the end of the Cold War, Japan displayed a passive and quiet stance in the bipolar world. But the internal and external changes that took place after the Cold War led Japan to rearrange its policies. The pragmatists in the Liberal Democratic Party, lost their power and the bipolar world order is long gone. This complexity gave birth to push Japan to adopt a different policy, particularly to revise its constitution. The main aim of this thesis is to examine the reasons behind the constitutional revision and to prove that these reasons are actually intertwined.