AFAIK Japan is the only country in history to have a pacifist constitution forced on them. Imagine if Germany made the USA utilize THEIR version of a constitution, fixed to neuter US influence and military power in the far future.. That would be amended to hell and back in no time. I have no issue with Japan fixing any parts they deem fixable of an arguably illegal constitution.
Showing the anti-Japan bias. The writer of this is a shill. Anyone care to explain why every country in the world has the right to manage their own military besides Japan?
Oh, they have every right to change their constitution and rearm. Just as their neighbors have every right to be nervous about a government that denies or downplays war crimes while rearming. Imagine a militarizing Germany under a Chancellor that said that the socialists, homosexuals, gypsies and Jews were really guilty of crimes against the state, that the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia was an independent and sovereign power that joined Germany in partnership, regularly visits a cathedral that honors and celebrates war criminals while quietly ignoring their crimes, publishing a book including an explicit comment that people like Heydrich, Himmler, and Goering weren't actually war criminals under German law. Imagine the French, Polish, and Russian reaction, especially in a political environment that includes regular confrontations over border tensions with the first two countries. Now compare to Abe's stated views on comfort women (no coercion involved whatsoever; they were all volunteer prostitutes), the Massacre of Nanjing (which Abe hasn't commented on, thankfully, but which recently saw a denunciation as a fabrication in 2007 by LDP lawmakers, and again in 2012 by the former-LDP mayor of Tokyo), the sovereign status of Manchukuo (which he considers a fully independent power not at all controlled by the Kwantung Army), whether Class A war criminals were really war criminals (check his book), and the visits to Yasukuni Shrine by him and others in his administration, even before he became Prime Minister. Don't forget the textbook controversies that tend to crop up regularly, most recently orders straight from the Ministry of Education to downplay the military's role in mass "suicides" during the American invasion of Okinawa (which *really* irritated the native Okinawans) and strike out any reference to "comfort women." No, I personally don't think that Japan is going to go recreating the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. No, I definitely don't blame China and especially Korea for looking askance at a potential denunciation of the War Clause, not because it will actually change anything (Japan being one of the largest military spenders in the world has already been mentioned), but because it's representative of a political shift in the validity of war as a diplomatic tool, especially in a country whose leadership seems largely unrepentant of the last major "war as diplomatic policy" adventures they embarked upon. So soon after their Chief Cabinet Secretary denounced a Korean war hero a terrorist (almost certainly true in a strict sense, but mind the connotations of that appellation in the modern day), it's just...heh.
What's really funny, though? That story spends so much concern on a remilitarizing Japan that it completely ignores the *domestic* aspects of the proposed reforms. Specifically, the language they want to add to Article 12, which guarantees "Freedom of assembly and association as well as speech, press and all other forms of expression are guaranteed," now includes "Notwithstanding the foregoing, engaging in activities with the purpose of damaging the public interest or public order, or associating with others for such purposes, shall not be recognized." Considering that Abe and the LDP recently railroaded through their own
muzzling act on leakers of state secrets (which got a lot of ire for being ramrodded through the Diet so soon after the revelations regarding how poorly the government has handled Fukushima, and likely has more convenient timing given support for the bill from America in the wake of the Snowden issue), there's been some question whether the LDP have decided to prevent any repeat of 2009 by any other means available to them. That's probably just paranoia on my part, though; I'm sure we can trust Shinzo Abe, his little LDP clique, and all future successors with being fair and equitable in how they define damage to the public order.
I just wish the DPJ hadn't lost power so quickly. I mean, when a single political power effectively maintains political control of a country for almost 60 years with only a single interruption, and this is no slight against the democratic values of Japan, it tends to become...ossified in its thinking. Especially when it was a large example of Cold War politics for the American occupation, led by MacArthur the five-star fool, to quietly sweep as much as he could under the rug of Japan's war crimes and end the occupation as quickly as possible with the right-wing parties in as dominant a position as possible, an advantage which the LDP continued to parlay effectively even after American involvement domestically ended.