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Article 9 of the Constitution is a World Heritage
Ōta Hikari × Nakazawa Shin-ichi
Date:07, Mar, 2019
Investigated and Written by Misaka Youhei
About our introductory articles


Ōta Hikari was born in 1965 Saitama, Japan. He was grown in (so-called) the middle class. His mother who had longed to be an actress, often went to see plays with Hikari in his childhood. She frequently read books to him, moreover. That custom politely cultivated his large insight into juvenile literature.

Grown up, Ōta Hikari went on to Nihon University, which made him meet a classmate Tanaka Yuji. The two formed a comic duo Bakushō Mondai in 1988. Through '90's, the duo became popular all over Japan. Still today, they are a regular on several programs of television and radio.

And in 1990, Hikari got married with Matsunaga Mitsuyo who had acted as a female entertainer. Soon, she quit the job and established Titan a show biz production company in 1993. Bakushō Mondai have belonged to it since the foundation. By the way, Titan came from the Sirens of Titan (1959) written by an American novelist Kurt Vonnegut whom Hikari deeply worshiped.

Nakazawa Shin-ichi (1950-) is a Japanese anthropologist who'd trained himself on Tibetan esoteric Buddhism in Nepal when he was young. I read him for the first time at this book. He seemed very gentle-mannered. He said that he was an e-mail friend of Hikari.

Hikari and Shin-ichi talked deep about Article 9 of the Constitution in the Article 9 of the Constitution is a World Heritage (2006). Hikari believed that Article 9 of the Constitution was a miraculous art created by America and Japan. Nobody'd create the art today. However, he was just an entertainer. Almost nobody'd pay attention to him when he announced alone. Then, he asked Shin-ichi to talk about Article 9 of the Constitution officially with him. Shin-ichi agreed and then, the conversations were realized.

In the beginning, Hikari mentioned about Miyazawa Kenji. An important one in modern juvenile literature of Japan. Somehow the Japanese thinking people'd ignored a part of Kenji's history. It might be connected to the things Japanese'd systematically ignored after the war, he thought. Then, they dived into a deeper zone and talked about Article 9 of the Constitution.

In a part of this book, Hikari introduced a bitter pill by his wife Mitsuyo. In Japan, when entertainers talk about something political, they sometimes meet a danger. For instance, Takuro (guitarist of a Japanese popular rock band Glay) said that he had got an envelope with a bullet when he had officially objected to the Iraq War. So Mitsuyo didn't desire Hikari to say anything political because it would call a danger to those around Hikari (including himself). He agreed to her, but decided to say.

I know there are arguments both for and against Article 9 of the Constitution. No matter what you think, it all depends upon you. However, I believe that the conversations with their resolutions can be of worth in a sense, apart from the contents.

About Article 9 of the Constitution is a World Heritage

・Talks by Ohta Hikari & Nakazawa Shin-ichi
・Published by Shueisha in 2006







 

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