The following is from Naoki Momota's Japan's Constitution.
Changing the Constitution is common sense in the world.
The Constitution of Japan was enacted on May 3, 1947, and will be 73 years old on May 3, 2020, but it is full of digging into how it was created and what it contains.
Despite this, the Constitution has not been amended word for word to date.
In this chapter, I will discuss how strange the Japanese Constitution is from a global perspective, the stupidity of the Japanese people who cherish it, and the abnormality of the Japanese society that refuses to allow even a discussion on its revision.
You need to understand that the Constitution is not immutable like a mathematical formula or a physical law.
The fact that one plus one is two will always be the same.
Whether it is 100 years old or 1000 years old, 1 + 1 = 2.
America, Europe, Africa, Asia... no matter where on earth you do your calculations, the answer is 2.
Also, the speed of light is eternal and unchanging.
The Constitution, however, is different.
No constitution says, "This is the right thing for humankind.
The evidence of this is that each country's constitution is different.
At the same time, as times and circumstances change, they change and must be changed accordingly.
In fact, other countries have amended their constitutions many times.
It is common sense in the world to change it when it no longer fits the times.
For example, the U.S. Constitution has an amendment clause.
Originally, the U.S. Constitution was just a list of rules for the Senate and House of Representatives and limitations on state authority.
However, when it came into effect (passed) in 1788, there were calls for the people's rights to be stipulated as well.
Therefore, the federal government added amendments from Article 1 to Article 10 to define the people's rights.
The First Amendment guarantees freedom of religion, speech, publication, and assembly, and the Second Amendment guarantees the right to bear arms (the right to own a gun).
Even after the Constitution is enacted, necessary things are added, and unnecessary things are deleted to suit the times.
That is what the Constitution is all about.
From 1945 after World War II to the end of 2018, Australia has amended its constitution five times, the United States six times, South Korea nine times, Italy 15 times, France 27 times, and Germany, a defeated country like Japan, 62 times.
In Mexico, the constitution enacted in 1917 has been amended over 200 times (some say 400 times).
To change the constitution more than 200 times makes me wonder how full of holes the constitution was when it was first enacted, but regardless of that, we can clearly see that constitutional changes are commonplace in the world.
Incidentally, the U.K. has an unwritten constitution (a constitution that takes custom and precedent without any written text. It is also called a customary constitution.
In other words, unlike the Japanese Constitution, which is a codified constitution, it is not codified.
Instead, it uses historical documents such as the Magna Carta and the Bill of Rights and past Supreme Court decisions as to its constitution.
This means that it changes rapidly with the times.
As you can see from this, the Japanese Constitution, which has not changed a single word of its articles in the 73 years since it was enacted, is still an anomaly.
I have not researched all the countries, but there is a high possibility that Japan is the oldest country in the world that has not changed its constitution at all.
It is, as they say, a Guinness record.
