4　憲法理念からのネイション意識の再構築

抄録

In recent years, campaigns by constitutional revisionists and supporters of the current constitution have been active as the current regime shows great ambition to change the constitution of Japan. After the Asia–Pacific War ended, Japan adopted a democracy-oriented constitution based on universal respect for fundamental human rights, principles of popular sovereignty, and pacifism.

These three principles of the constitution can be distilled to maximum respect for individual dignity. The fundamental element of human rights is the right to live with dignity. Popular sovereignty means that individuals with dignity can form a society through deliberation. Lastly, pacifism refers to the restriction of the use of armed force, such as war, which strips humans of their dignity and mobilizes them as objects of military power.

Despite these values being enshrined in the legal framework, the Japanese society has failed to implement them in practice. Racism, for instance, is completely incompatible with the idea of respecting individual dignity as it establishes each party’s superiority or inferiority based on group identity. Japanese society, in many ways, can be perceived as being “tolerant” of racism. For example, political figures have been accused of committing various racist acts and have not resigned from their respective offices.

Some find it surprising that a politician would not resign in this case but would resign if involved in any other illicit affair. This means that Japanese society, in general, considers racial discrimination as a less serious matter than a personal illicit affair.

Why is it that we disregard these common acts of racism despite having created a legal framework that places maximum importance on individual dignity? One crucial reason is that the idea of the Japanese nation is based on imagined blood relation. To eliminate racism, Japan must transform the idea of the nation from an imagined blood relation to a sense of nationalism that shares the maximum respect for individual dignity, which is the fundamental philosophy of the constitution.