The Origins of the Present Japanese Constitution

Throughout the years when the Meiji Constitution served for most purposes as Japan's basic law (1890–1947), it was always a matter of considerable value to the nation's constitutional scholars to have readily available an authoritative statement of the intent of the framers of that document. This was Itō Hirobumi's Kempō Gige (Commentaries on the Constitution). It played a role somewhat analogous to that of Madison's journals in our own annals of constitutional, legal and historical scholarship, but was even more definitive. It is interesting therefore to speculate just where present or future Japanese scholars might find a similar source for their present constitution. The facts presently available would indicate the necessity of a pilgrimage to New York's Waldorf Tower. There or in its immediate environs are to be found the most notable of the “founding fathers” of the present Japanese Constitution. That one should have to seek on foreign shores for the author of the fundamental law of a great modern state is in itself a phenomenon unique in recent history. Even stranger perhaps is the fact that some nine years after its promulgation and four years after the end of the military occupation which made it possible in the first place, this constitution remains formally intact and unamended.