Article 9 of Japan’s 1947 Constitution represents the postwar pledge Japan made to the world. Born from deep reflection on the nation’s wartime aggression, the landmark peace clause declares that Japan “forever renounces war as a sovereign right of the nation.” It additionally prohibits “the maintenance of land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential.”
Nearly eight many years later, nonetheless, Japan’s navy actuality presents a starkly completely different image. The nation’s protection funds has risen for 14 consecutive years, whereas its arms imports elevated by 76 p.c over the previous 5 years. Japan has additionally eased restrictions on arms exports, together with deadly weapons, and deployed long-range missiles, amongst different steps aimed toward accelerating its navy buildup.
According to Zhang Yun, a professor at Nanjing University’s School of International Studies, though the wording of Article 9 has remained unchanged for many years, its underlying pacifist rules have been progressively eroded.
Residents stage a protest towards Japanese authorities’s deployment of long-range missiles with counterstrike capabilities, in Tokyo, Japan, March 31, 2026. /Xinhua
Japan’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has sought to revise the Constitution since its founding in 1955. However, constitutional modification is a troublesome course of, requiring a two-thirds majority in each homes of the Diet earlier than the proposal will be put to a nationwide referendum. Faced with these procedural hurdles, Japan’s right-wing forces have as a substitute pursued an alternate method: reinterpreting the Constitution and enacting new legal guidelines to work across the restrictions imposed by Article 9, Zhang says.
This is how the hollowing-out has labored: the textual content stays the identical, whereas the which means of what it permits is progressively expanded.
To see how far that which means has shifted, we first want to take a look at Japan’s “exclusively defense-oriented policy.” Â Shaped by Article 9, it’s, within the phrases of Japan’s Ministry of Defense, the fundamental coverage for the protection of Japan, one that allows using defensive drive solely when Japan comes underneath assault, retains that drive to the minimal needed for self-defense, and limits the protection capabilities Japan possesses to the identical minimal.
Japan Ground Self-Defense Force personnel participate in a live-fire train on the East Fuji Training Area in Gotemba, Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan, June 7, 2026. /VCG
In July 2014, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s cupboard reinterpreted Japan’s Constitution to permit the train of collective self-defense. Abe described the transfer as a matter of “finding the appropriate interpretation.” In apply, it expanded the position of the Self-Defense Forces from defending Japan alone to additionally defending a “foreign country in a close relationship with Japan.”
The following 12 months, in September, after greater than 200 hours of deliberation, Japan’s Diet handed laws for the primary time permitting the train of the suitable to collective self-defense. The payments met fierce opposition. Members of the Japan Federation of Bar Associations rallied in Tokyo alongside teachers and residents’ teams. Its chairman, Susumu Murakoshi, warned that if the payments had been handed, the Constitution “couldn’t work as a constitution.”
According to Zhang Yun, Kishida’s cupboard took this method a step additional. In December 2022, the cupboard permitted three up to date paperwork outlining Japan’s safety and protection insurance policies, together with the brand new National Security Strategy (NSS). The new NSS known as for Japan to amass “counterstrike capability,” successfully broadening the scope of what could possibly be thought-about the “minimum necessary” degree of protection underneath the nation’s completely defense-oriented coverage.
These paperwork quickly translated right into a concrete navy buildup: sharply rising protection spending, buying and deploying massive portions of US missiles and easing long-standing restrictions on arms exports.
Atsushi Koketsu, former vp of Yamaguchi University, warned that the three paperwork characterize a basic shift in Japan’s protection coverage, abandoning the precept of “exclusively defense” in favor of what he described as a “preemptive attack strategy.”
Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, heart, attends a cupboard assembly at her workplace in Tokyo, August 4, 2026. /VCG
Now, underneath Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, the main target is transferring from constitutional reinterpretation towards formal constitutional revision. At a celebration conference, she careworn that “the time has come” to reform the Constitution and expressed hope that subsequent 12 months’s conference can be held with a proposed modification already in sight.
From Abe to Kishida and now Takaichi, Japan has employed a “salami-slicing” technique to progressively erode its postwar pacifist framework, paving the way in which for additional navy growth. Japan has repeatedly invoked so-called “security threats in its neighborhood” to justify its navy buildup. But when a rustic refuses to confront its wartime previous, who, in the long run, is the true menace?
Source: CGTN