Japan government's bid to bring back tradition branded 'clumsy' and 'archaic'

TOKYO - Japan's century-old imperial proclamation urging people to be willing to die for the emperor was consigned to history books until video surfaced showing children in an Osaka kindergarten enthusiastically reciting it.

A cabinet decision allowing schools to teach the long-banished edict, which was used to promote militarism in the 1930s and 1940s, has delighted hard-core nationalists but left many Japanese scratching their heads.

Others were horrified at the sight of youngsters chanting the archaic proclamation, even as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's wife, Akie, praised them during a visit to the school, run by a nationalist seeking to inculcate pupils with prewar values.

The once-revered Imperial Rescript on Education, issued in 1890, was abolished after World War II over concerns it had contributed to creating a militaristic culture in Japan.

It exhorted citizens to "offer yourselves courageously to the State" so as to "guard and maintain the prosperity of Our Imperial Throne".

But Abe and his fellow conservatives have sought to stealthily bring it back into vogue, as part of a bid to revive traditional values that have lost their shine following the introduction of an American-penned pacifist constitution which renounces war and designates the emperor as a figurehead.

"Japan should not just be an economic power but a country respected and relied on in the world for its high ethical views and morality," hawkish Defense Minister Tomomi Inada said last week.

Some constitutional scholars have expressed concern over the government's attempt to expose impressionable minds to a document with "fanatic and cultlike" leanings.

Sota Kimura, a law professor at Tokyo Metropolitan University, said the revival appeared to be a sop to nationalists who "feel terribly humiliated about the postwar system imposed by the Allies".

The edict was once considered so sacred that school principals who accidentally disrespected the document would commit suicide out of shame or fear of punishment, according to some accounts.

But the clumsily managed revival has left many Japanese confused over the 19th-century edict's relevance to their hectic 21st-century lives.

Its archaic wording means most Japanese today have neither read it nor know how to interpret it.

"I'm not really clear what it is," said Yoshiko Yamanaka, a 48-year-old mother of two, when asked about the document.

"It's got something to do with having to serve the State for the emperor or something, right?"

Abe's government has tried to play down the issue, saying it is not mandatory for schools to teach the edict and that any lessons involving it must not "go against the constitution".

But even conservative media who usually support Abe's agenda have drawn a line.

"It is clear that a national view centered around the emperor cannot be viable under the current constitution," the top-selling Yomiuri Shimbun daily said in an editorial.