The Politics of Victim and Acceptability of Limitations on Fundamental Rights: A Case of Effects on the Emergency-Related Laws by the North Korea Abduction issue and Media in Japan

Abstract

This paper examines when a society and its people which are considered antimilitaristic embrace limitations on their fundamental rights. During the postwar era, Japan avoided enacting Emergency-related laws due to that it would evoke wartime adversity and the human rights abuses experienced by Japanese people. Between the 1960s and the 1970s, the government tried to make a preparation for the situation in which war might break out in adjacent areas, but opposition parties and civil society harshly criticized such attempts. This had been called “an emergency taboo.”The laws, however, was easily passed by both the ruling and opposition party during 2003, and there did not seem to be any major opposition against them. In this paper, I suggest two major factors which affected the change in threat perception within Japanese society: the North Korea abduction issue and the media reports and TV programs covering that. The fact that Japanese people were abducted by North Korean spies was confirmed for the first time during the Japan–North Korea summit in September 2002. Many reports and TV programs embarked on dealing with the tragedy of Japanese victims emotionally.

The astonishing news and the media environment in Japan following the summit were a precondition to request novel means of addressing threats from North Korea, and the government and lawmakers, particularly conservatives, considered this situation a chance to enact Emergency-related laws for the protection of their people. Nevertheless, this Japanese perception did not resonate with a neighboring democratic country, South Korea, according to a poll taken in 2003. As well, the general election result-the opposition party gaining seats, suggested that Japanese antimilitarism did not collapse in the same year.