Siva's View 5: Kamakura

The Kamakura period (1192-1333) is important in Japanese history for two remarkable facts: the establishment of the government by the pioneer peasants and the emergence of religious sects for them. These two were the first in the world then.

As doctuments shows, in the Nara and Heian periods, you haven't found any trace of the peasants living and contributing to the governmetal system. They are thought to have been like slaves; I mean, they were allotted land and forced to grow crops for aristocracy.

In the second half of Heian period, some of the slaves ran away and pioneered into the Kanto area, called Bando then; there, they needed to protect their own land and lordship, so they began to carry arms with them. They are thought to have been the first Samurai (Japanese warrior).

A problem emerged then. The aristocrats in Kyoto, the former capital of Japan, tried to get them under their control, so they needed to protect their own land, followed by a war between Bando and Kyoto. The Bando won.

The leader of the peasants in Bando, Minamoto Yoritomo, took the soverinity from Mikado, the former name of Tenno or Emperor in Japanese (the word, emperor, cannot regarded as the exact word to translate "Mikado" into English; I will explain later) and opened the new government in Kamakura, the beginning of the Kamakura period, which you can call the second stage in Japanese history, the feudal system.

Through these events, the Bando peasants began to think about their own life. Every individual dies, but they try to survive. This contradictory movements in which persons are always must have been gazed at by them, and they needed to get a new kind of philosophy to see the world.

Then several Buddhistic sects were born, of which the two extreme sects were Jo-do Shinshu and Zen in the sense the former tells you to know your ignorance and impotence to upgrade you to a person with wisdom while the latter convinces you that your exaltation is the only way to give you the wisdom.

Constitution

Since May 3rd, 1947, Japan has had the current constitution, which might change to activate the Japan Army under the present Prime Minister regime. Recently, there has been talk about whether it should be revised. Most crucial in the talk seems to be the ninth article: Japan does not have any force effective to handle international conflicts.

The problem is on how to intepret the international conflicts, or, more directly, if the purpose of self-defense will be categorized into international conflict. This is a gray zone susceptible to some interpretations. This room was the cause of our WWII, concluded by some of us. The room gives persons in power the choice to interpret and lets them run.

It is nonsense to try to choose one of the two views: the first that war or violence cannot work as a way to solve conflicts among nations but to conclude and the second we need to have the capacity to protect our country and the world peace from countries that will try to handle matters with power. Because both of them are right. History tells us wars have killed guilty and innocent persons indiscriminately and good and righteous persons are not always superior to evil persons in power.

The two views can remain intact in the current ninth article; therefore, I conclude we should not change the constitution. The problem is not the constitution but how we can use it, so we must be deliberate when electing the representatives among whom the prime minister will be selected. More important, any person, however diligent and deliberate they are, can make mistakes in many cases, so you have to realize each of you should be responsible for the decision our leader you have elected has made.