Shinzo Abe reveals 2020 plan to include existence of military in first-ever change to Japan’s pacifist constitution

Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on Wednesday unveiled a plan to seek a first-ever change to the postwar constitution, bidding to see the revision go into force in 2020, a specific time frame not publicly mentioned before.

In a video message to a gathering celebrating the 70th anniversary of the charter going into force, Abe, who is also head of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, proposed making explicit the existence of the Self-Defence Forces in the language of the war-renouncing constitution, which currently does not make any mention of it.

“By making explicit the status of the SDF in the Constitution during our generation’s lifetime, we should leave no room for contending that (the SDF) may be unconstitutional,” Abe said in the video message, delivered to an audience generally supportive of constitutional amendments.

Specifically, Abe proposed referring to the SDF in the Constitution while leaving untouched two paragraphs in Article 9, a controversial change that “deserves popular debate”, he said.

The first paragraph of Article 9 says: “Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.”