Law of the Land; As soporific as it sounds, the challenge of reforming the country's Constitution is getting Japanese excited.

Byline: Christian Caryl (With Hideko Takayama and Kay Itoi)

Japan's twentysomethings don't have much of a reputation for caring about politics. But Mitsunori Shigeno, 27, is a fine example of how that's beginning to change. First he and his classmates at Phoenix English College in Tokyo began hearing in the media that leading politicians wanted to revise the Japanese Constitution. Then a delegation of Phoenix students--most of whom hold full-time jobs and reserve their weekends for language study--sought an audience with a member of Parliament to discuss the issue. (To be polite, they brought along a cake.)

Next, armed with new arguments, they held a class debate on a question that is preoccupying growing numbers of their countrymen: whether Japan should renounce Article 9, the famous constitutional clause in which the nation swears off war, and the means to wage it, for all time. The students' debate ended in a draw, but, says Shigeno, it fulfilled its purpose--to get people talking. "Because we don't have military power, other countries are looking down on Japan--like the Chinese and the North Koreans," he says. "Japan doesn't have official military power, and Japan is now following America blindly."

Not long ago that sort of talk would have gotten Shigeno and his friends branded as hopeless reactionaries. But these days, now that the administration of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and his ruling Liberal Democratic Party has placed revision of the 58-year-old Japanese Constitution squarely in the center of the political agenda, the Phoenix students' willingness to confront once taboo subjects is looking downright mainstream. In its own quiet way, this most risk-averse of countries is transforming itself into a laboratory for potentially far-reaching political change as Japanese leaders, the media and even ordinary citizens gear up for an unprecedented national conversation about their country's basic law. For outsiders, Japan's international stature and relentless modernity make it easy to forget that the country still lives under a Constitution that was imposed by victorious Americans at the end of World War II.

At the center of the revision movement is Koizumi himself, who has publicly declared his intention to alter Article 9 so that it will define a clear legal basis for the existence and role of the nation's military. That's clearly the most contentious issue up for discussion, but it's not the only one. The conservative newspaper Yomiuri Shimbun is calling for new language that would protect the public's right to privacy from prying journalists. Members of the Communist Party want to keep clauses that protect "minimum standards of living" and "the right to work." Public intellectuals and some politicians are proposing amendments for protecting the environment and for creating an independent human-rights commission. Japanese business associations, breaking with a tradition of political neutrality, want to keep Article 9, but add language allowing Japan to participate in collective defense. Feminists are mobilizing to defend Article 24, the Constitution's provision on gender equality, which some in the LDP would like to see watered down. Even housewives like Tokie Tojima, 60, are forming groups to put out the word that Japan shouldn't abandon its pacifist stance.

If all that sounds suspiciously like a battle for the country's soul, that's because it is--a struggle made manifest ...