George Miyazaki: Intoxication

1

As a man of over seventy, I am leaving this memoir behind my life, which I do not so much regret as I think a bit too precious to totally ignore. Owing to my born egotism, I've had a hard life, but there is no way of making good for it now when such a life has brought about nothing for it. Better tell you essentials only.
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 was put on the wall behind the reception in the entrance hall of the center, which housed such public facilities as a hall and a library. In spite of my protests, the old poster has been there for years now. No Japanese with common sense 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, let alone the ugliness of them intact even after such Alefs left here without seeing that year's cherry flowers famed around. (The center nearest to thus-evacuated Alef den has subsequently cleared such posters.)
My immediate protest made at that time to the city's official against the poster was rewarded with an unexpected reply, "Its our city's policy." from this middle-aged man who was looking up the poster placidly. So embarrassed by this comment from our public servant, I couldn't help shouting not exactly at him, "Even Aums are Japanese!" and abruptly left him summoned up there by me behind. I can't even remember if any receptionist was behind the bar or not in this after-lunch recess on the summer day.
The next day I visited the police box next door to the center to ask the police officers on duty to come together to witness this constitutional offense. On our way to the alleged scene, we took a short cut through the city's branch office, whose front door was adorned with a different poster saying:

"This city accepts no notice of moving-in/removal by an Aum (Alef) believer." (See P.S.)

One of the police officers called my attention to it, but I declined it, telling this young and tall man, "Let's forget it for now." It was problematical too but the former was bluntly simple to be easier for me to handle. Looking up ours soon, I pronounced, "Here you are. The moment an Alef child or old woman coming in to ask for something sees it, the poor thing would surely walk out insulted and dismayed. It's a sheer case of discrimination violating our human rights. Apprehend those responsible for it immediately, please!" They seemed to recognize some problem with it. The other officer, who was a young girl, looked almost offended by it. We were, at this moment, like bewildered children whose family creed was ignored by their senior members. In reality, however, such seniors were administration machines covering half a million citizens here.
Back in their box, the police finally promised me, who was by now pretty disconcerted by their frequent "Guv'nor" in their checking my identity or else, to inform their boss of this "disgrace to Japan" as labeled by me. A few days later, that policeman told me, "My boss said the case was out of our scope. You can still sue them if you like. Alright, Guv'nor?" After thus seeing the police reluctant to take action here, I complained of this case 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 the people's right for no discrimination besides the Alef's own under the Constitution (Article 14 "Right of equality").

2

On a fine mid-summer morning that year I rode my bicycle to see the prosecutor, who summoned me to his office on a hilltop near the center of the city. I enjoyed the half an hour ride west since I used to stay inside on weekdays, working on documents, or mostly waiting for them to come from my clients in Tokyo. "Something's wrong," I was muttering to myself because of the flashes of notions coming up to me running against the cool breeze. Aums killed people indiscriminately. Even I might as well have been a victim of their underground sarin attack a few years further back. At that time, my facsimile sometimes broke down when the sending copy was more than a few dozens of pages, which I had, then, to take with me on board one of those unlucky train lines at that ominous time zone to my client, whoever was around that fatal area. Now, people are rejecting Aums indiscriminately everywhere in this country. Neither side seemed to mind being indiscriminate in condemning the other. One was cruel, but is the other too? For instance, one of my chatmates, who pay me a bit because we talk over phone as linguistic practice, has never sounded so interested in this topic in spite of her warm-hearted nature. Her cool attitude shown frankly from her carefree standpoint as the sponsor of our talking sessions must be telling how people feel about my appeal. "Why so? Anyway, let me see whatever will come along."
The prosecutor's spacious office room was exceptionally quiet unlike those I happened to go by in my earlier life. The prosecutor, who looked about a half of my age in his well-tailored summer suit, led me to a couch, seating himself in front of me in a shirt style. "Local autonomy should fully be respected in our decentralized democracy, you see," said he persuasively, "I rather recommend you to file in your suit with the civil court." I did not dare preach a sutra to my Shakyamuni. When I got out of this small building, the showering cries of cicadas in the thicket covering it reminded me somehow of the three pieces of photos in my bag. Back in his office, the prosecutor seemed a bit shocked by them, which he made his secretary photocopy. They were of scenes with our posters at civil centers distantly surrounding the old Alef den.
I waited for a favorable news from my prosecutor, who kept replying to my intermittent inquiring calls, "The case is still pending." Once, I said to him on such an occasion, "I want nothing like your positive decision on this but a sort of your initiative to lead them to their voluntary withdrawal of such posters." His immediate reaction to this was, "I have no authority like that at all." What I wanted was only his initial address to those accused by me, and it could have led to their quick withdrawal of such posters.
In the mean time, I was studying our Constitution at intervals. A civil lawsuit was recommended to me by the prosecution as well as by the police. I couldn't help assuming some lawfulness behind their opinion like that.
In our Constitution, I did hit, as I faintly expected, upon an article pertaining to my snag, which must now take us back to Japan half a century ago.

3

The Constitution of Japan, which is basically a word-for-word copy of its draft given 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 this word is somehow translated into Japanese as 'possessing' only in our Constitution." wondered a teacher before us soon after it came in force.
Consequently, Japanese 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?" whispering soon were we as middle teens to each other in recess at school in the western Japan. Then, someone remarked, walking with me down a corner of the playground, "Don't you know it's only the first step for a far more cunning trick coming in the next article?" "No idea. What is it?" He confided to me the secret in detail, looking often into my eyes to check if I was with him. Honestly, no sooner he started telling it to me, using English as necessary than I was lost, only nodding back to him now and then vaguely. The next Article 12 goes:

The freedoms and rights guaranteed 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. How preposterous this is when the entire idea in this context is originated in the French Revolution's Declaration of Human Rights, whose axiom is "Go free without getting in the way of others."
But resuming my study on my old riddle after such a long time, I failed at first to find the rest of the second trick allegedly pitted in it. In the past, I did occasionally feel it strange to have such a dubious provision here, but I used to let it alone because it was what the deceptiveness of bourgeois democracy was all about for me as a left-wing student or a disillusioned drunkard again later.
I looked into many of old documents in this field without finding any article telling our constitutional rumors once appeared so rampant throughout Japan. (As a teacher with no license, I did, a few years after the first revelation of the tricks, see a pedagogical guide published by the prefectural education board chiding its teachers into forgetting such 'trivial' rumors for viewing the situation, which was, mind you, still a bit shaky at that initial post-war time, from a higher standpoint.)

4

Anyway, I started this time my 'anti-poster' campaign by setting up an Internet HP named 'Constitution Parrots' featuring my criticism on the 'first trick' with not-so-brisk reactions. Nevertheless, I was well convinced that the first trick compromised our human rights so gravely as to associate Japan with such countries as China where our kind of rights was, as was admitted by itself, held historically valuable but not much enjoyable due to their own socialistic principles, whose stance here agreed with their collectivism but ours didn't with our individualism, and that was the question, you see. "No countries could flatly deny human rights nowadays including a lot of dictatorships around you can hardly use such rights under, dear." This was a remark my campaign so far owed much to since I was nearly giving it up after finding first any 'right' to be involving 'its use' legally.
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 also by this ex-bureaucrat politician, I tried harder to get any clues to the unknown core of my second trick with good fruits. That is, I saw an English-English dictionary (OALD) say:

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

Also other English-Japanese dictionaries:

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 (as so-called 'Public Welfare Purpose Theory'), while there is not much difference between the 'common benefit' and the 'public welfare,' which, nevertheless, replaced the other for some reason yet to be known.

5

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."

Isn't this reading what we should have in our Article 12 since it does agree neatly with other provisions on our human rights and all in our Constitution?
Using your right this way, could you, then, be against the common or public benefit? Of course, not, if you are to care about the public as illustrated in Mac's Article 11 ('Common Benefit Care Theory'). That is, you should be free only 'to the extent that such a right does not interfere with the public welfare (Article 13)' as you are repeatedly restricted so in our supreme law.
By the way, an ironbound rule of translation is coherence. It is now crystal clear that this 'Care' theory is coherent with its context with the historic axiom mentioned earlier as its leitmotiv, while that 'Purpose' theory is not. (The latter may be coherent, because of its collective nature, with China's or now-defunct Soviet's principle, which was said to have a 1977 constitutional provision very close to our Article 12 at its tail. Perhaps, this apparent resemblance of our 'Purpose' provision to the Soviets' was attributed by a young American researcher to the prewar Japanese leftist tradition, a Japanese newspaper reported (29/4/02) appreciatively. But it was misleading because our Constitution was, as everyone knew, translated from its Mac's draft into Japanese in a day or so forcibly with no time for insinuating anything extravagant. Besides, our government had sooner submitted its own draft to Mac, who rejected it because it was, much to even my own disappointment, a mere rehash of the Imperial Constitution.
To thus-rigged up draft, our social democrats did, in the subsequent parliamentary debates, add
such a few points as livelihood protection, which have then been talked much about as fruits of the "Purpose" theory said to have reflected our sense of national community, only to justify with disguise the 'Purpose' provision, which should, I'm afraid, be too radically leftish even for our social democracy because of its right-turned duty ubiquitous.)
Accordingly, their 'Purpose' provision was, a mistranslation. Was our government mistaken in such a crucial work of their national interests? Highly unlikely. Then, 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.

6

In translating our 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 not to have the idiomatic frame 'for one's good' built in this key 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'. (Incidentally, my difficulty in finding this second trick wasn't without reason. I have some friends in London, England, whom I was first acquainted with some thirty years ago when I was a teacher of Japanese for them. Just before closing down my former HP as scheduled at the 02/03 year end, I wanted my assertion on this trick to be confirmed by such natives. When I asked them if our key set phrase "for the common good" could have another meaning like mine, their final answers were
unanimously positive in spite of some initial negatives, which were taken back when our OALD sentence was shown.)
Armed with this discovery, my campaign gained momentum. My HP attracted more than a thousand accesses before its closure at the 02/03 year end besides my media contacts for publicizing it. Our Lower and Upper Houses' constitutional study teams as well as major political parties' headquarters were sooner informed of it. (Log in to the upper one's for a free copy of the law in two languages.)
On the other hand, the prosecutor decided not to indict those accused by me on March 30, 2001, 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."), while my city hasn't budge an inch (See P.S.) 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. (Continues to "Intoxication 7-9" via the guide bellow.)