By Yuki Tsukui

The Japanese government took a step toward making the law for dispatching troops abroad permanent on January 8. This law enables the government to send the Japanese Self-Defense Forces overseas at any time. The Japanese Government formally renounces war as a right of sovereignty and refuses to settle disputes using military force in Article 9 of the constitution. It also states that military forces with war potential will not be maintained. Therefore, the new law infringes on Article 9 of the constitution because of the maintenance of armed forces and the exercise of the right of collective self-defense.

Also, the government set the defense authorization bill for fiscal year 2008 at about \4.78 trillion, which is about the same as last year's budget. According to the statistics of the Stockholm International Peace Research (SIPRI), Japanese Military spending was ranked fifth the world in 2007.

The meaning of "peace" in Japan's pacifist constitution, which Japan is very proud, is losing its meaning. There is one country Japan can and should follow--Costa Rica. Costa Rica is the only other country in the world which has a pacifist constitution. Costa Rica is a small country in Central America, just to the north of Panama, with a population about 4 million.

Article 12 of the Costa Rican constitution requires that "The Army as a permanent institution be abolished." They established a pacifist constitution on November 7, 1949, right after the end of a civil war in which 2,000 people lost their lives. The reason they made a pacifist constitution is that Costa Rican's never wanted to have a civil war again, and they felt that having an army provokes war, and that by having a peace constitution disagreements would not turn into armed conflict if there were no military.

In the 1980s, a series of civil wars in Central America broke out. Their belief in their pacifist constitution became stronger then. The then President Luis Alberto Monge declared "permanent unarmed and positive neutrality." The next president, Oscar Arias, won the election in the spirit of the former president. He helped to mediate in civil wars in three neighboring countries and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1987.

Costa Rica has an amazing history, but they set a good example when they used the military budget for education after disbanding their military under the slogan of "more teachers than soldiers."

Most countries in Central America are developing countries and there are children who cannot even go to school. However, Costa Rica's literacy rate is almost 100 percent.

Because of the harrowing experience of war, the Japanese constitution, which was promulgated in 1946 and enforced in 1947, stresses pacifism. Japan has adhered to the constitution, which advocates peace at any price, renunciation of war, and fundamental human rights. That's what has kept Japan out of armed conflicts since World War ��.

However, only a few years after the enforcement of the constitution, the "No Army" stipulation in the text was violated due to the establishment of the National Police Reserve, which later became the Self-Defense Forces. There is no doubt that the fundamental purpose of the pacifist constitution changed then.

America has the world's largest defense budget now. Japan followed American in saving money for the defense budget and cutting the costs for education and welfare. In Japan, because of the impact of the declining birthrate and the aging population, social security-related expenditures are increasing but the outlays for promoting education and science have decreased by about \1 trillion compared to four years ago.

Japan experienced the horror of the atomic bomb, which is perhaps one of the worst tragedies in modern human history, and at the same time they created a peace constitution which is a rare virtue in the modern world. As a country that bears the scars of war and also has a peace constitution, it is the duty of Japan to promote peace for the world.

There are some misgivings that Japan might become a military-first country like America if people think that it is necessary to have an army to protect themselves against other countries.

Japan should take to heart the spirit of Costa Rica and voluntarily use the budget for education instead of the military. It is time to take action to increase the number of countries with peace constitutions all over the world.