Where public figures stand on Constitutional Revision
9 people have a position on record here, ordered from the most liberal to the most conservative overall rating. The position is an editorial reading; the statements it rests on are on each profile.
Founder and leader, La France Insoumise
Sixth Republic via citizen revolution
Mélenchon demands constitutional rupture replacing the Fifth Republic's presidential monarchy with participatory democracy.
observed 2026-05-15 – 2026-06-09
Founder and outgoing leader, Reiwa Shinsengumi
Politicians who violate the constitution daily have no standing to amend it — obey it first, then we can talk.
Yamamoto rejects the LDP-Ishin push for an emergency clause and extended Diet terms outright, calling revision 'a fraud and an act of theft' and arguing that the state already breaches Articles 13, 15 and 25 by leaving carers, the poor and the sick to fend for themselves. He has said he will physically obstruct revision if necessary, and wants any constitutional commission session repurposed into an inquiry into existing violations.
observed 2025-11-26 – 2025-11-26
Prime Minister of Canada
Clarity Act clear majority, not 50+1
Carney insists secession referendums require a clear majority under the Clarity Act and that a bare 50 per cent plus one is not enough.
observed 2026-05-27 – 2026-05-27
Leader, Democratic Party for the People
Amend the constitution — add an emergency clause and delete Article 9's second clause.
Unlike the rest of the opposition, Tamaki treats constitutional revision as non-negotiable: he wants an emergency clause rather than reliance on an emergency session of the upper house, and he wants Article 9's second clause deleted so the limits on the Self-Defense Forces are written down explicitly. In October 2025 he cited the Constitutional Democratic Party's refusal to revise the constitution as one of the reasons he could not lead an anti-LDP government.
observed 2025-10-15 – 2025-10-15
Member, House of Representatives; Prime Minister 2024-2025
Constitutions decide whether a country can stop itself -- so fix Article 9, and revere what the postwar order got right.
Ishiba is the LDP's most thoroughgoing revisionist on Article 9, arguing for years that the second paragraph renouncing war potential should be deleted so the Self-Defense Forces have a lawful constitutional footing, rather than Abe's approach of bolting an SDF clause onto the existing text. His 80th-anniversary document approached the same question from the other end, locating Japan's road to war in the prewar Imperial Constitution's absence of civilian control and arguing that tolerance, deliberation and a robust democracy are the real safeguards -- which is why party conservatives disowned a revisionist's document as dangerously self-critical.
observed 2025-10-10 – 2026-07-29
Leader, Japan Innovation Party; Governor of Osaka
Article 9's second paragraph should go, and Ishin is the accelerator that gets the LDP there.
Yoshimura's coalition deal put a joint LDP-Ishin drafting council on Article 9 revision and emergency clauses into writing with a fiscal-2026 deadline, and Ishin's own position is more radical than its senior partner's: delete Paragraph 2 outright and replace the Self-Defense Forces with a constitutionally recognized National Defense Force, where the LDP would preserve the existing wording. With the coalition holding a two-thirds supermajority after February 2026, this stopped being theoretical.
observed 2025-10-20 – 2026-07-24
Prime Minister of Japan
The postwar constitution has to be rewritten, and Article 9 first — the Self-Defense Forces should stop existing in a legal grey zone.
Takaichi treats constitutional revision as the point of her premiership, and the February 2026 landslide handed her the two-thirds lower-house bloc needed to propose one. She has since framed it in consensus language — a cross-party Diet proposal 'at an early time' — because she still lacks two-thirds in the upper house and would then need to win a first-ever national referendum.
observed 2026-02-08 – 2026-02-20
Leader, Sanseito
Don't amend the postwar constitution — replace it.
He goes further than the LDP's amendment agenda, arguing the 1947 constitution should be discarded and rewritten so Japan can hold independent defense capability, preemptive strike capability and nuclear deterrence. He has nonetheless balked at LDP emergency-clause language, citing distrust of the World Health Organization declaring emergencies over Japan.
observed 2025-12-10 – 2025-12-10
Former Daegu mayor; retired conservative heavyweight
Seventh Republic overhaul: abolish the Constitutional Court, create a constitutional tribunal inside the Supreme Court,…
Seventh Republic overhaul: abolish the Constitutional Court, create a constitutional tribunal inside the Supreme Court, restore Cheong Wa Dae, and launch reform via presidential task force on day one.
observed 2025-04-14 – 2025-04-15
