Introduction As Garrett Epps declares in his 2013 constitutional study “Poetry of the Preamble,” while the phrase “‘We the people of the United States’ is etched deep in the national consciousness,” the people were not involved in its composition. Epps argues that those who wrote it speak to the people in their own voice so effectively that they have come “to believe that they gave birth to the Constitution, that it issued from, rather than being all but imposed upon, ‘the people.’”¹ One wonders to what extent this holds true for the Japanese people, whose “peace constitution,” composed in 1946…