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Opens with the brief speech by Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru to the lower house of the Diet that invited the Diet's examination of the government's draft revision. It sets forth the preliminary exposition of the text offered by Kanamori Tokujirō, the cabinet member charged with defending the so‐called “government draft.” It presents initial reactions by Diet members, from Kita Reikichi on the right to Morito Tatsuo and Nosaka Sanzō on the left, indicating that the debate would be lively and spirited. It shows how early skirmishing centered on kokutai (the form of the polity, heretofore based on the authority of the emperor) and the renunciation of war.

On June 29, the speaker of the House of Representatives named 70 members (chosen to represent the parties proportionally) to serve as an ad hoc committee on [constitutional] revision. This chapter shows that, from the outset, members displayed considerable anguish about the draft's language (was it a mere translation of a foreign proposal?), and particularly its rude restrictions on the emperor's role. It examines the mounting tensions led, in mid‐July, to a dramatic quarrel between Colonel Kades and the cabinet minister in charge of the revision project, Kanamori Tokujirō, focusing on whether kokutai (Japan's unique polity) had survived in the revision.

Having passed the lower house, the proposed revision came next before the House of Peers. The aristocratic upper house would exist no longer under the new constitution, yet its approval was critical to the project's legitimacy. Ch. 19 tells how the proposed revision came under severe attack by peers, but was also stoutly defended. The principal defenders, besides Kanamori, were a highly respected lawyer, Takayanagi Kenzō, and Nanbara Shigeru, president of the University of Tokyo; the scholarly Sasaki Sōichi and a fierce and eloquent peer, Sawada Ushimaro, led the critics. Again the role of the emperor under the new charter (kokutai) was an object of earnest interest, as was Article 9 and the bill of rights.

On August 31, a “special committee,” consisting of 45 members of the House of Peers, began a series of secret meetings that would last until October 3. Attention focused again on the emperor's role (kokutai), popular sovereignty, and the proposed electoral review of judges. Peers also criticized the American‐sounding rhetoric of the preamble and the notion in Chapter X of the constitution as “supreme law.” Notable during these debates were exchanges between Takayanagi Kenzō and Sasaki Sōichi. In the end, after making a few minor amendments, the House of Peers added its approval of the revision.

Presents the thinking of Japanese officials on constitutional reform. Convinced that the Potsdam Declaration had left the matter to the Japanese, Irie Toshio, chief of the cabinet's Legislation Bureau, argued in two memoranda in September and October 1945, that democracy could best be achieved by strengthening the Diet and guaranteeing basic human rights. The government sought advice on constitutional reform from scholars Miyazawa Toshiyoshi and Yabe Teiji. The Foreign Ministry then follow up with tentative proposals, by Tatsuki Keiichi, to reduce the influence of the military and make the Diet fully responsible to the people. However, both Irie and Tatsuki wished to preserve imperial sovereignty and the autonomy of the imperial household. In early October, a new cabinet under Shidehara Kijūrō appointed Matsumoto Jōji to head a committee to study constitutional reform.

Here the narrative returns to historical development to discuss the role that a movement called ‘Late Mito Thought’ played in the years prior to the Restoration. Here we find a revival of the Neo-Confucian–Shintō amalgam developed by Yamazaki Ansai. The ‘young Turks’ at Mito were highly critical of how the country was being run and argued for a moral revival on Confucian lines in order to effectively counter the threat from Russia and Britain. The most important of these figures was Aizawa Seishisai, whose writings were influential with many young samurai concerned that Japan was heading for disaster. In the end this ideology of total exclusion was not to succeed as the pressure from outside proved too powerful to resist. It was then realized that an opening up of the country controlled by Japan itself was infinitely preferable to the alternative.