It is the best article on what the Science Council of Japan is all about.
It is from the front page of today's Sankei Shimbun.
The author, Yoshihisa Komori, is one of the best journalists of his day.
So, there is always a 5W1H in his articles.
The Shadow of GHQ at the Science Council of Japan
The debate over the Science Council of Japan reminded me of the words of Charles Kades, who drafted the Japanese Constitution.
It may be a strange association, but the two overlap in a peculiar way.
Kades was a U.S. Army colonel in the senior ranks of the U.S.-dominated General Headquarters of the Allied Forces (GHQ) that occupied Japan, and he was the lawyer. He became the chief architect of the drafting of the Japanese Constitution.
In the 1980s, I had a lengthy interview with him in New York, and he told me in detail about the process of drafting the Japanese Constitution.
His main goal was to keep Japan permanently demilitarized.
Kades didn't hesitate to answer my question about the ultimate purpose of the Japanese Constitution.
He said that GHQ intended to impose unarmedness on Japan so that it would never again be a military threat, even if it meant suppressing the fundamental right of an independent nation to defend itself.
It established the Science Council of Japan under the GHQ occupation.
It was established in 1949, two years after the GHQ-drafted Constitution was enacted.
The following year, it issued a statement saying it would not involve them in military-related scientific research.
It fits perfectly with what Kades said about GHQ's intentions to disarm.
At the time, occupation forces sought to make post-independence Japan a non-national country, which weakened its original traditions and culture.
They even seriously considered changing the entire Japanese language to Romanized letters.
It is no coincidence that the Science Council of Japan formally resolved to abolish Japan's first letters of the Japanese era during the occupation.
The resolution called for abolishing the Showa, Heisei, and Reiwa years.
Immediately after announcing a statement denying research, the council requested the Prime Minister to abolish it in May 1950, saying that the "Japanese era, which simply represented the Emperor's rule, is not suitable for a democratic nation."
It isn't widely known now.
At the time, the Science Council of Japan, under the name of its president, Naoto Kameyama, sent a resolution to then Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida and others calling for the abolition of the "Japanese era" and the adoption of the Western calendar.
The resolution contained the following statement.
The resolution read: 'From a legal standpoint, there is no reason to maintain the Japanese era. If the current Emperor ceases to exist, the Japanese era of the Showa era will naturally disappear, and there will be no more Japanese era after that.'
'Now that Japan is newly established as a democratic nation, with people's sovereignty replacing the Emperor's reign under the new Constitution, the Japanese era's maintenance is meaningless and inappropriate to the concept of a democratic nation.
The radical politics of the Science Council of Japan (SCJ), which dares to use the term "people" instead of "nation," cannot be dismissed as a matter of the past.
The statement rejecting military research that was adopted at the same time has been updated since then and is still being carried over to the present day.
When discussing the current state of the Science Council of Japan (SCJ), examining its unusual origins and the history of political activities is imperative.
However, the irony of history is that the U.S. authorities, who initially followed the council's lead, soon changed Japan's military and defense policies dramatically.
(Visiting Correspondent in Washington).