Nobel laureate Oe leads thousands of Japanese to defend pacifism

0 Comments | AFP, July, 2005

TOKYO (AFP) — Thousands of Japanese led by Nobel Prize-winning author Kenzaburo Oe rallied in Tokyo to defend the nation's post-World War II pacifism amid support for altering the 1947 constitution.

Some 10,000 pacifists held the rally at a conference hall in central Tokyo as a handful of nationalists heckled them from outside over loudspeakers, with police on hand to prevent trouble.

"I believe we can hold back this attempt to revise the Constitution," said Oe, 70, who has written of Japan's disorientation after World War II in which his father died.

"I feel encouraged by the Japanese people," said Oe, the 1994 Nobel laureate in literature.

"I believe from the bottom of my heart that we must dedicate this kind of meeting to protect Article Nine," he...