¹ Regarding the sudden popularity of books on Nippon Kaigi, see Saito Masami, Nogawa Motokazu, and Hayakawa Tadanori, “Dissecting the Wave of Books on Nippon Kaigi, the Rightwing Mass Movement that Threatens Japan's Future,” The Asia-Pacific Journal, Volume 16, Issue 19, Number 1 (2018).

² Oishi Yoshio, Kenpō kaisei no hitsuyōsei (Tokyo: Yūshindō, 1962), 42.

³ On Abe's general ideas about the nation, the state, and patriotism, see Abe Shinzō, Utukushii kuni e (Tokyo: Bungei Shunjūsha, 2006).

⁴ See the organization's website. On Nippon Kaigi's history and activities, see Aoki Osamu, Nippon Kaigi no shōtai (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2016); and Kanno Tamotsu, Nippon Kaigi no kenkyū (Tokyo: Fusōsha, 2016). The APJ has also published insightful articles on the organization: David McNeill, “Nippon Kaigi and the Radical Conservative Project to Take Back Japan,” Volume 13, Issue 48, Number 4 (2015); Sasagase Yuji, Hayashi Keita, and Sato Kei, “Japan's Largest Rightwing Organization: An Introduction to Nippon Kaigi,” Volume 13, Issue 50, Number 5 (2015); and Sachie Mizohata, “Nippon Kaigi: Empire, Contradiction, and Japan's Future,” Volume 14, Issue 21, Number 4 (2016).

⁵ Koseki Shōichi, Shin-kenpō no tanjō (Tokyo: Chūō Kōronsha, 1989). See also Koseki, Heiwa kokka Nihon no saikentō (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2013); “The Case for Japanese Constitutional Revision Assessed,” translation by Richard Minear, The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol 4, Issue 12 (2006).

⁶ In English sources, the following works highlight Japanese people's – especially ordinary people's – active and spontaneous involvement in the democratization reform and the making of the Constitution. John Dower, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 2000); Ray Moore and Donald Robinson, Partners for Democracy: Crafting the New Japanese State under McArthur (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). The account by Charles Kades, chief of the Government Section, provides an interesting insight into the negotiations between the two sides. See Kades, “The American Role in Revising Japan's Imperial Constitution,” Political Science Quarterly, Volume 104, Number 2 (1989).

⁷ Walter Benjamin, “Critique of Violence,” in Selected Writings Volume 1, 1913-1926, eds. Marcus Bullock and Michael W. Jennings (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996).

⁸ Étienne Balibar, “The Nation Form: History and Ideology,” in Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities, eds. Étienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein (London: Verso, 1991), 93-94.

⁹ Literary critic and novelist Kurokawa Sō explains this contradiction in detail. See Riaritī kābu: “senmu” to “sengo” no aida ni hashiru (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1994), Chapter Eight.

¹⁰ Sugita Atsushi, “Tekisuto/jissen to shite no konsutitūshon,” in Heiwa kenpō to kōkyō tetsugaku, eds. Chiba Shin and Kobayashi Masaya (Kyoto: Kōyō Shobō, 2007). My argument here resonates with some legal and constitutional scholars' discussions of consent as a crucial legitimator for a government. It is possible to explain the Constitution as practice as the process by which the people have built consent to be ruled by the Constitution, thereby consolidating a democratic political structure. See Walter Murphy, “Consent and Constitutional Change,” in Human Rights and Constitutional Law: Essays in Honour of Brian Walsh, ed. James O'Reilly (Dublin: The Round Hall Press, 1992). I thank Lawrence Repeta for suggesting this link.

¹¹ Ian Shapiro, The State of Democratic Theory (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2006), 3.

¹² See the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare's website.

¹³ I have discussed the issues of the right to live in peace in detail elsewhere. See Tomoyuki Sasaki, Japan's Postwar Military and Civil Society: Contesting a Better Life (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), Chapter Three; and “Whose Peace: Anti-Military Litigation and the Right to Live in Peace in Postwar Japan,” The Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, Volume 10, Issue 29, Number 1 (2012).

¹⁴ For a translation of Nagoya High Court's decision, see “Mōri v. Japan: The Nagoya High Court Recognizes the Right to Live in Peace,” trans. Hudson Hamilton, Pacific Rim Law and Policy Journal Vol. 19, Issue 3 (210).

¹⁵ We should note that presenting this type of extended family as typical of the Japanese family is in itself an ideological statement. In reality, nuclear families had exceeded 50 percent of total households already in the 1920s. According to the latest survey conducted by the Ministry of Labor, Health, and Welfare, as of 2017, the three-generation household accounts only for 5.8 percent. The largest category of households in contemporary Japan is the nuclear family household (29.5 percent), followed by the single-person household (27 percent) and the household of a married couple with no children (24 percent). See the Ministry's Kokumin seikatsu kiso chōsa no gaiyō. The data is available online.

¹⁶ See the Liberal Democratic Constitutional Reform Promotion Headquarters' website, 28-29.

¹⁷ See the Liberal Democratic Constitutional Reform Promotion Headquarters' website. Lawrence Repeta offers a detailed overview of the LDP draft for the revised Constitution and points out its challenge to liberal democracy. The article includes a translation of the LDP Preamble. See Lawrence Repeta, “Japan's Democracy at Risk – The LDP's Ten Most Dangerous Proposals for Constitutional Change,” Volume 11, Issue 28, Number 3 (2013).

¹⁸ See the website by “Ten Million People Network to Realize Constitutional Revision.”

¹⁹ Maruyama Masao, “The Theory and Psychology of Ultra-Nationalism,” in Thought and Behavior in Modern Japanese Politics, ed. Ivan Morris (London: Oxford University Press, 1963).

²⁰ On precarity in today's Japan, see Anne Allison, Precarious Japan (Durham: Duke University Press, 2013); “Precarity and Hope: Social Connectedness in Postcapitalist Japan,” in Japan: The Precarious Future, eds. Frank Baldwin and Anne Allison (New York: NYU Press, 2015).

²¹ Neil Davidson, “Putting the Nation Back into the ‘International,‘” Cambridge Review of International Affairs, 22:1 (2009).