The present constitution was drafted in 1946 and approved as a complete revision of the old Meiji constitution of 1889. Rewriting the constitution was one of the early goals of the Allied Occupation and when the Japanese government proved reluctant to make extensive changes, the Americans who ran the Occupation took the matter in hand and wrote a new constitution, later translating it into Japanese. The constitution is far more democratic and liberal than the old one. It established civil liberties such as freedom of religion, reduced the status of the emperor to that of a figurehead, and firmly located sovereignty with the people (not the emperor). It also includes Article 9, the anti-war article, which has frequently been the target of attempts to revise the constitution. However, no amendments or revisions of the document have taken place.
