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Intoxication (Japanese) comes after the quiz.

A poster started it all when I became aware of it at the civic center nearby around the middle of 2000.

'No application by an Aum (Alef) believer is acceptable.' (see P.S.)

It has been put on the wall in the entrance hall of the center for years now. No Japanese with commonsense can overlook the outrageousness of it when its copies are in a number of such local centers run by our city next to Tokyo across the Edo River.
My immediate protest made to the city's official was rewarded with his placid reply, "Its our city's policy." I couldn't help shouting not exactly at him, "Even Aums are Japanese!"
After seeing the police reluctant to take action here, I complained of this ‘disgrace to Japan’ with the prosecution on August 9, 2000, saying
that the city/police bosses should be punished according to the Criminal Code (Article 193 'Abused authority') for their obstructing people's right for no discrimination besides the Alef's own under the Constitution (Article 14 'Right of equality').

The Constitution of Japan, which is basically a word-for-word copy of its draft made by Douglas MacArthur, says first in its Article 11:

'The people shall not be prevented from enjoying any of the fundamental human rights.'

In this provision, the word 'enjoying' means 'possessing and using' in English, but is somehow translated into Japanese as 'possessing' only in it.
Consequently, people are deprived of the guaranteed 'use' of such rights, while in the English context, as the Mac's or as our own, they are supposed to be 'possessing and using' such rights throughout. A clever trick, isn't it?

When our Constitution was put in force, there was a rumor that this trick was a mere step for a far more cunning trick coming in the next Article,
which goes:

'The freedoms and rights to the people by this Constitution shall be maintained by the constant endeavor of the people, who shall refrain from any abuse of these freedoms and rights and shall always be responsible for utilizing them for the public welfare.'

Incidentally, the last part of Article 11 in the Mac's corresponding to that of ours above is:

'... an obligation on the part of the people to prevent their abuse and to employ them always for the common good.'

It must be the last clause in Article 12 above that supports our ugly posters, since with the guaranteed use of human rights cancelled covertly by the first trick, the last preposition 'for' in it paraphrasable as 'for the purpose of' must now establish the clause firmly as obligatory to the people, whose human rights may now be a mere means for achieving the public welfare, while the leitmotif in the context was based on the Declaration of Human Rights (1789), whose axiom was "Go free, without getting in the way of others."

Around the end of summer that year, I saw a former Justice Minister angry in his newspaper column saying, "Even Alefs are Japanese." like I was once shouting. Encouraged by this ex-bureaucrat politician, I disclose their second trick as follows:

First, an English-English dictionary (OALD) says:

'Is it right to deceive people, even if it's for their own good?'

Also some English-Japanese dictionaries say:

'I am saying this for your good.'

The idiomatic phrase 'for the common good' in the Mac's clause above is usually read as 'for the common benefit' as a set phrase. Then, the phrase may mean 'for the purpose of the common benefit' to underlie the phrase 'for the public welfare' at its full strength in our Article 12 ('Purpose' theory).



Now. in this set phrase 'for the common good,' the idiomatic frame 'for one's good' can, however, mean 'wishing one's benefit' or 'with one's benefit taken into consideration' as are evident in the two sentences in the dictionaries above. What will happen if we read Mac's Article 11 at its tail, adopting this reading? Let's see:

'.., to employ them (our rights) always 'with the common benefit taken into
consideration,,,' ('Care' theory)

Isn't this reading what we should have in our Article 12? That is, you should be free only 'to the extent that such a right does not interfere with the public welfare (Article 13).'

By the way, an ironbound rule of translation is coherence. It is now clear that this 'Care' theory is coherent with its context with the human right preferred as its leitmotiv, while
that 'Purpose' theory is not. Accordingly, the 'Purpose' provision was a mistranslation.
Was our government mistaken in such a crucial work of our national interests? Highly unlikely. Was it deliberate? Yes, and that was the second trick, which has been working whether it was deliberate or not, ignoring ever since a lot of subsequent chances to correct it, I believe.

In translating the key phrase 'for the common good' in Mac's Article 11, our government replaced the two words 'common good' with so similar words 'public welfare' that it would, without being noticed, get rid of the word 'good,' only so as not to have the idiomatic frame 'for one's good' built in this phrase in our Article 12. By this cunning trick, our government was able to turn Mac's original tail part 'supplementing a caring obligation seen above to the basically freely enjoyable human rights' guaranteed in our Article 11 (or Mac's 9) into our Article 12 at its tail preposterously forcing us 'to use our human rights always for the purpose of public welfare.’

On March 30,2001, my prosecutor decided not to indict those accused by me, and another prosecutor reasoned, on April 10, his reply to my inquiry for their decision in such a short way as 'No crime constituted.' My subsequent request for a prosecution review brought back on October 23 no other than the 'Sustention of the original decision.'

In the meantime, I have kept contact with Civil Liberties Bureau, Ministry of Justice at its three levels from its local to central offices over phone with no positive effect whatsoever. Outstanding was its branch head in this prefecture, who dared, at last, point out, "Aum itself is to blame, to say frankly," To this I retorted, "Don't forget what you are saying now." My city hasn't budge an inch even after the supreme court decision on June 26, 2003, finalizing a case gone against some municipalities sharing the same policy with our city against Aum. (See P.S.)



In concluding this, we shouldn't have failed to see this prose best in our postwar history losing its smoothness due to the unbalance thus made between Articles 11 & 12. That is to say, the multivocal "for" (able to mean only "for the purpose of" in this context because of its sole alternative possible "for the benefit of" redundant, nevertheless, due to its object word "welfare") could have concluded the last clause smoothly with such a tolerable translation for everyone as "in favor of."

Surprisingly, however, this kind of fatalities isn't uncommon in our supreme law. Amongst them, the one so far discussed is the worst since it eradicated the root of our democracy to change it into a bottomless bucket letting off our filthy posters and all.
Another constitutional fatality is, as everyone knows, the betrayed renunciation of war. The right of self-defense, which is said to be self-evident or internationally recognized, is not so mentioned in our supreme law that it is invalid in our country. Our Constitution says in its Article 98:

'...no law, ordinance, imperial prescript or other act of government, or part thereof, contrary to the provisions hereof, shall have force or validity.'

Isn't the right in question contrary to this provision? Incidentally, in this provision the word "act" was translated into Japanese as "actions and deeds," which should, as already known, have been "laws and regulations" because of the "other" meaning all the rest of the kind preceding, and this is another stroke of that series of our familiar tricks. That is to say, this trick left a loophole behind by not forbidding "other laws and regulations or part thereof" to insinuate into it such a right as seen just now.
The terminal cancer third is the right of dissolution of the Lower House attributed to the Prime Minister. As the then Speaker of the Lower House rebuked it some years ago, there is no such right existing in our supreme law, whose draft by Mac did contain it in association with a non-confidence resolution only to be erased by our translator for enhancing it forcibly to a discretionary right of the prime minister as the advisor to the Emperor dissolving the house.

Thus, your Constitution has long been being abused freely all of its three power principles of ideology, force and authority. Who've done it all, do you think? Of course, no other than that old royalist in white 'tabi' socks who used to joke with a cigar stuck in his mouth that his hobby was to eat you or pull your leg. This ringleader's foxy diplomatic loot getting too much for our Establishment trying ever since to cry wine and sell vinegar is, mind you, a symbol of our post-war Japan.

It is never too late to mend: you have been ruining his historic choice, only to let him roar back from the southern sky, "Don't keep pulling my leg!"

(Non-fiction completed on April 1, 2005.)

P.S.

In spring, 2006, just before the election of our mayor of this Declared (10/12/98) City of Human Rights, our ugly poster replaced the outlawed one (See "Intoxication 1&6") at our city branch office, which will have no polling place this time since it will be in our civic center with our usual poster.

Under the circumstances, I have no reason to close this page down. (15/6/2006)

LDP Chronology