NEW YORK -- The first time I knew that Japan's Supreme Court was not really supreme but just another political arm of the state was when it ruled on the Sunagawa Incident. In December 1959, it reversed the Tokyo District Court's ruling that the Japan-U.S. Mutual Security Treaty was unconstitutional.

The District Court's decision, handed down just nine months earlier, had electrified the nation. In July 1957, some of the demonstrators against the expansion of the U.S. military base in Sunagawa, Tokyo, were arrested for violating a special law pertaining to the security treaty. I doubt that the arrests themselves caught much attention; clashes between demonstrators and the police were common at the time. But the District Court's ruling, when it came, was a complete surprise. It was instantly dubbed the Date Decision after the name of the judge, Akio Date.

For me, a 17-year-old student, it was an eye-opener. Teachers had taught us that the Self-Defense Forces were unconstitutional because of Article 9, which states, in part, "land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained." But the prevailing sense was that nothing could be done about it. The government created the military and allowed a foreign military presence through a security treaty. Whatever the Constitution said didn't really matter.