By PAUL KALLENDER-UMEZU
TOKYO — Following a May 15 report by a key advisory panel that Japan must reinterpret its constitution to enable it to engage in collective self-defense, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe launched a highly public drive to push ahead with the historic change.
The 60-page “Report of the Advisory Panel on Reconstruction of the Legal Basis for Security,” chaired by former ambassador to the US Shunji Yanai, urges Japan to drop its current interpretation of Article 9 of its US-drafted constitution, which makes Japan the only country in the world to deny itself the right of collective self-defense. That right, which allows countries to defend other nations under certain circumstances, is enshrined in Article 51 of the UN charter.
Japan’s posture is due to change as quickly as Abe, who has been pressing for such a move for a decade, can push it. The Japanese premier hit the ground running, launching an emotive appeal to the Japanese people in an address to the nation almost as soon as the report was made public.
Standing in front of an illustration showing a force from an unnamed aggressor country — clearly China — attacking a US ship carrying Japanese children, Abe asked: “We, the Japanese government, can’t do a thing to help them. Do you really think that’s good?
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