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Jailing Peace Protesters in Japan: Lessons from the “Tent Village” Case
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 March 2025
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This article describes the arrest and prosecution of three peace protesters during the Iraq War era. It places these events within the broader context of the campaign to revise Japan's Constitution, especially Article 9, to allow for the deployment of Self-Defense Force units abroad. It also introduces the great hesitancy of the Supreme Court to enforce Article 9.
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References
1 David McNeill reported the case early on. See “Enemies of the State: Free Speech and Japan's Courts,” Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, February 16, 2006, https://apjjf.org/david-mcneill/1835/article and “Martyrs for Peace: Japanese antiwar activists jailed for trespassing in SDF compound vow to fight on,” Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, May 3, 2008, https://apjjf.org/david-mcneill/2766/article.
2 See “Critics’ Reviews” at https://www.rout1edge.com/Japans-Prisoners-of-Conscience-Protest-and-Law-During-the-Iraq-War/Repeta/p/book/9781032046266.
3 Details of the arrests, interrogations, and other details are reported in Lawrence Repeta, Japan's Prisoners of Conscience: Protest and Law During the Iraq War (Routledge, 2023), especially Chapter 2.
4 The full text of Constitution Article 9, the only provision of a chapter titled “Renunciation of War,” reads as follows:
“Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.
“In order to accomplish the aim of the preceding paragraph, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized.”
Operating within the constraints of Article 9, the Diet passed legislation authorizing the Iraq deployment that limited SDF units to “humanitarian and reconstruction measures. Law concerning the Special Measures on Humanitarian and Reconstruction Assistance in Iraq, Law No. 137, 2003. See Mika Hayashi, “The Japanese Law Concerning the Special Measures on Humanitarian and Reconstruction Assistance in Iraq: Translator's Introduction,” 13 Pacific Rim Law & Policy Journal, 579 (2004). https://digita1commons.1aw.uw.edu/wi1j/vo113/iss3/4/
5 Such abusive treatment is not uncommon. Human Rights Watch produced an authoritative report that documents these practices in 2023, “Japan's Hostage Justice System,” available here: https://www.hrw.org/report/2023/05/25/japans-hostage-justice-system/denial-bail-coerced-confessions-and-lack-access.
6 See “The Forgotten Prisoners,” at https://www.theguardian.com/uk/1961/may/28/fromthearchive.theguardian.
7 I found much of this material in quite obscure locations. One extraordinary publication titled “War and Sex” (Senso to Sei), carried lengthy interviews with the Tent Village defendants, essays by Kato Katsuko and other material. http://sensotosei.world.coocan.jp/ (Kato was one of the founders of Tent Village and served as representative of the group at the time of the arrests.)
8 See Lawrence Repeta and Yasuomi Sawa, “Chilling Effects on News Reporting in Japan 's ‘Anonymous Society,”’ in Kingston (ed.), Press Freedom in Contemporary Japan (Routledge, 2017).
9 Ishizaki Manabu, “Freedom of Expression and Civil Society” [Seijiteki hyōgen no jiyū to shimin shakai], Hō to Minshushugi 430, July 2008, 28. Quoted in Japan's Prisoners of Conscience, 173.
10 Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503 (1969).
11 Cohen v. California, 403 U.S. 15 (1971).
12 Article 19(2) of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights reads “Everyone shall have the right to freedom of expression; this right shall include freedom to seek, receive and impart information and ideas of all kinds, regardless of frontiers, either orally, in writing or in print, in the form of art, or through any other media of his choice.” https://www.ohchr.org/en/instruments-mechanisms/instruments/international-covenant-civil-and-political-rights.
13 Constitution Article 9 has been the subject of great controversy throughout its history and much litigation, but prior to the Iraq case, these disputes did not concern deployment of military forces in a war zone. For an overview of the litigation prior to the Iraq War, see John O. Haley, “Waging War: Japan's Constitutional Constraints,” 14 Constitutional Forum 18 (2005).
14 Defendant Onishi Nobuhiro's stirring courtroom declaration on the illegality of the Iraq War and the SDF deployment is reported at Japan's Prisoners of Conscience, 62-63.
15 This court was later moved from Hachioji to Tachikawa.
16 Tokyo District Court (Hachioji branch), Judgment of December 16, 2004. Hanrei Jihō, No. 1892, 15, Hanrei Taimuzu, No. 1177, 133.
17 Tokyo High Court serves as a proving ground for judicial appointments to the Supreme Court. All six of the career judges currently serving on the Supreme Court previously served on the Tokyo High Court. Four of them held the post of Tokyo High Court “Chief Judge.”
18 Tokyo High Court. Judgment of December 9, 2005. Hanrei Jihō, No. 1949, 169.
19 Fifteen justices serve on Japan's Supreme Court, but nearly all cases are decided by one of three “petty benches” of five justices each. In this particular case, one justice, a former prosecutor did not participate, presumably because of his service in the Ministry of Justice when the case unfolded. The other justice who chose not to participate also served as the Chief Justice of the entire Court. He was undoubtedly preoccupied with the administrative burdens of this position.
20 Supreme Court, Second Petty Bench, Judgement of April 11, 2008, Keishū 68(5), 1217. Major newspapers all included this statement in their reports on April 12, 2008.
21 Mainichi Shimbun, April 12, 2008. There is no mention whatever in the Supreme Court's judgment of the police tactics. Measures such as lengthy detentions on trivial charges, interrogations behind closed doors with no lawyers present and denial of contact with family members are accepted as a matter of course. See Human Rights Watch, “Japan's Hostage Justice System.”
22 For a recent discussion in English, see Keigo Obayashi, “Free Speech Jurisprudence in Japan,” in Shinji Higashi and Yuji Nasu, Hate Speech in Japan (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021). For a summary of the Supreme Court's many rejections of claims to constitutional protection for free speech, see Shigenori Matsui, The Constitution of Japan, (Hart Publishing, 2011), 196-211.
23 I describe some of these cases in detail in Japan's Prisoners of Conscience. Chapter 13 reports the arrest and detention of a Buddhist monk who followed his ordinary practice in delivering the Akahata and other material and chapters 3 and 8 report the fanatical surveillance conducted by the state security police of a government employee named Horikoshi Akio. Horikoshi was ultimately ruled not guilty by the Supreme Court, a rare case where the Court ruled against the police. https://www.routledge.com/Japans-Prisoners-of-Con-science-Protest-and-Law-During-the-Iraq-War/Repeta/p/book/9781032046266.
24 Lawrence Repeta, “Japan's Democracy at Risk - The LDP's Ten Most Dangerous Proposals for Constitutional Change,” Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, https://apjjf.org/2013/11/28/1awrence-repeta/3969/article.
25 See Christian G. Winkler, The Quest for Japan's New Constitution (Routledge, 2009). https://www.routledge.com/The-Quest-for-Japans-New-Constitution-An-Analysis-of-Visions-and-Constitutional-Re-form-Proposals-1980-2009/Winkler/p/book/9780415731508
26 Regarding the 2015 legislation, see Christopher W. Hughes, “Japan's security policy in the context of the US-Japan alliance” in James D. Brown ed., Japan's Foreign Relations in Asia (Taylor and Francis Group, 2017). Hughes identifies the “most important element” of the changes to Japan's defense policy to be the “breach on the ban of collective self-defense,” in other words, empowering the government to deploy Self-Defense Forces abroad in coordination with allies, the very act that caused controversy in 2004.
27 Colin P.A. Jones “Japan's New Conspiracy Law Expands Police Power,” Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus 15(16) Number 1, https://apjjf.org/2017/16/jones. Lawrence Repeta, “Abe's legacy of expanded police power,” East Asia Forum, August 23, 2023, https://eastasiaforum.org/2023/08/23/abes-legacy-of-expanded-police-power/
28 “Japan: UN Special Rapporteur Expresses Concern over the Government's Conspiracy Bill,” Human Rights Now, June 1, 2017, https://hrn.or.jp/eng/news/2017/06/01/japan-conspiracy-bi11/.
29 Lawrence Repeta, “Spying on Muslims in Tokyo and New York — ‘Necessary and Unavoidable’?” Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, September 15, 2016, 14(18) Number 2, https://apjjf.org/2016/18/apj and “Police Surveillance of Muslims and Human Rights in Japan,” Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus September 28, 2014 12(39) Number 1, https://apjjf.org/2014/12/39/asia-pacific-journal-feature/4190/article.
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