<Begin Segment 26>

MU: Tell us a little bit about that revision of the Japanese judicial system. What was wrong with it and how did the revision fit in?

GK: Well, basically, Japan adopted -- they called it, "New Constitution" -- but during the Meiji reform in 1886, or thereabout, they adopted the first written constitution, patterned after the German constitution. (It) was (an) unitarian type, autocratic, and government had the entire power. And emperor was in, had the full command of the entire nation. (The) committee, or board, served as advisory (committees), which governed (Japan)... well, entire legal system, governmental system. Which was very autocratic, there was nothing said about the individual rights (...). The word "democracy" was not mentioned. When the war ended -- they (...) on their own went to revise the constitution, (but) when MacArthur came on and said, "Here's your new constitution," (...) they had to adopt that. And some of the expressions in the new constitution -- of course, translated into good Japanese -- but the idea was kind of foreign to the Japanese. But they accepted the whole thing, and not a word was amended or changed from the MacArthur constitution. That's what it is today, too. Not a word in the past fifty years, no change was ever made. And that constitution started out with the preamble in the same nature as the United States preamble, saying that the people were the sovereign power of the nation. And it's a democratic system, and whole system would be based upon democratic process. That's the preamble. And autocratic portion of the old constitution was deleted, and everything was patterned after the American system. And the first twenty articles, or so, were almost like the ten amendments of the United States Constitution. And then, of course, it set out the government system, dividing into three systems: judicial, executive, and legislative. And that was patterned after the United States Constitution.

MU: And you helped develop the so-called MacArthur constitution?

GK: No, this constitution was adopted in 1946. I went to the legal section in 1948, after the war crimes trial was over. But in the midst of implementing the new constitution, Japan had the statutes-at-large, with thousands, thousands of laws, regulations, enacted under the old constitution, which had to be reviewed and revamped. Either completely cancelled, or amended, or certain portions deleted. And they were in the process of doing that when I went to legal section. So, because I was the only one who spoke Japanese -- there were several committees to work on various aspects of the constitution -- but they all came to me for advice and consultation. So I was busy with my own assignment. My assignment was the judicial section of the constitution. But other committees came over, so I was pretty busy day and night... attending most of the meetings...

MU: You were kind of then facilitator then.

GK: Yes. And intermediate. Because of my language ability, I served as an interpreter for the other committees and worked on my own committee.

MU: Well, you certainly deserve an award.

GK: Well, they thought so at least, fortunately. [Laughs] So they cited that in the, my...

MU: Gee, that's wonderful. Okay.

<End Segment 26> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.