Following boisterous confrontations in the Diet and more than three days of public protest, the Upper House finally enacted two divisive security laws early Saturday that will mark a significant departure from Japan’s postwar pacifism.

Enacting the contentious laws was one of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s long-held ambitions. His goal was to find a way to remove some of the key legal restrictions that the war-renouncing Constitution imposes on the Self-Defense Forces during overseas missions in order to strengthen Japan’s all-important military alliance with the United States.

Given the ruling coalition’s strength in both chambers of the Diet, the opposition camp was essentially powerless to stop him. It was thus reduced to obstructing the voting procedures and tapping public frustration with the legislation in hopes of rallying widespread resistance.

Abe’s team submitted the two bills to the Diet in May. Since then, more than 200 hours have been spent deliberating the legislation.

The Upper House’s final plenary session was called late Friday night as the opposition camp, led by the Democratic Party of Japan, delayed Diet procedures in protest by submitting no-confidence and censure motions against Abe’s Cabinet ministers in both chambers.

According to opinion polls, a majority of the public opposes the legislation and many think the government’s efforts to explain it fell short.

A poll by the daily Asahi Shimbun from Sept. 12 to 13 found that 54 percent of the 1,994 respondents oppose the bills and 29 percent support them.

One of them amends 10 existing security-related laws to lift various SDF restrictions, including Article 9’s long-standing ban on collective self-defense.

The other creates a new permanent law that allows Japan to deploy the SDF overseas to provide logistic support for United Nations-authorized military operations involving a foreign or multinational force.

Lifting the ban on collective self-defense, or the right to defend an ally under armed attack even if Japan itself is not, was long considered banned by war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution. So instead of formally amending the Constitution, which was considered politically unfeasible, Abe simply had the government’s long-standing interpretation of Article 9 altered to allow collective defense.

Abe has argued that the Japan-U.S. alliance would be critically damaged if Tokyo refused to defend the U.S. during operations aimed at protecting Japan.

Under the Japan-U.S. security treaty, the U.S. is obliged to defend Japan in a contingency but Japan does not have to defend the U.S. Instead, Tokyo is obliged to grant Washington routine use of military bases in Japan.

Many voters fear the new laws could see Japan getting dragged into a war involving the U.S., given its traditionally heavy reliance on Washington’s diplomatic and military power.

They also fear the unprecedented move could render the Constitution toothless, since a majority of constitutional scholars believe the new laws violate Article 9.

Many security and diplomacy experts, however, praise the move as a reform, given the growing military might of China and America’s declining presence in the Asia-Pacific region.

Under the new laws, Japan will theoretically be allowed to use collective self-defense to come to the aid of an ally — presumably the United States — under three conditions: if Japan’s “survival” is at stake, there is no alternative, and the use of force is kept to the “minimum necessary.”

The United Nations charter bestows this right to all member countries, including postwar Japan. But no major countries attach such strict conditions to its use, government officials have maintained.

 

Ignoring protests from furious voters and opposition lawmakers, the ruling camp led by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has enacted two divisive security laws, marking a significant departure from Japan’s postwar pacifism.

Following the law’s passage, which came early Saturday morning, one question stands out: How good is the public’s memory?

Polls have suggested a majority of voters — more than 60 percent according to some surveys — opposed the bills, and the forcible enactment of the legislation is now expected to push down the government’s approval rating.

But Abe’s government and the ruling coalition will not face a political test until the next Upper House election slated for July.

The prime minister has now shifted gears, attempting to recalibrate the economy in the hopes that the public’s anger with the government will wane before the July election.

But maintaining the current level of outrage for more than nine months does not look to be an easy task for Abe’s opponents. In December 2013 his support rate plummeted considerably after the ruling camp forcibly enacted the state-secrecy legislation, only to bounce back the following month.

Students Emergency Action for Liberal Democracy (SEALDs), a coalition of college students that played a key role in the demonstrations against the security bills, has already shifted its focus of maintaining protest momentum — and keeping the public’s anger stoked — until the Upper House poll.

“I want to emphasize this is not just something that university students are doing during a summer vacation,” Aki Okuda, a SEALDs leader, told a news conference Thursday at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan.

“Now, many people have started talking about ‘bringing down a politician who supported the bills in the election.’ That’s has become like a mantra for us,” Okuda said.

Ultimately, experts say maintaining the level of public anger at Abe hinges on how well he handles economic issues before the July election.

“The key would be economic policies,” said Kazuhisa Kawakami, a political science professor at Meiji Gakuin University.

Kawakami said one factor will be whether Abe can secure sufficient financial resources to meet ballooning social security costs.

He said the important thing is for the LDP “to return to the basic principle of politics — to revitalize the economy and increase tax revenues.”

He added, the price of failure for the LDP may be the public abandoning it.

Currently, there are few economic bright spots for Abe to point to as his “Abenomics” policy mix appears to have started to run out of steam.

Bank of Japan Gov. Haruhiko Kuroda, who was appointed by Abe to promote an ultraloose monetary policy, confidently declared in April 2013 that Japan would tame deflation in just two years by buying a staggering amount of government bonds each month and somehow stimulating the nation’s economy. But in almost 2½ years, Japan is still far from achieving Kuroda’s inflation target of 2 percent a year, prompting economists to question the validity of his — and Abe’s — economic remedies.

On Sept. 8, the government released revised GDP figures for the April-June period showing that the economy shrank 1.2 percent on an annualized basis.

Elsewhere, the Chinese economy continues to struggle. Last month, the Shanghai stock market crashed, prompting many in recent months to suspect that the country may no longer be able to sustain its miraculous economic growth.

Doubts about the Chinese economy sent the Tokyo stock exchange in a tailspin, as China is the nation’s No. 1 trading partner in terms of the value of exports and imports.

Shiro Tazaki, a veteran journalist and senior writer at Jiji Press, predicted that Abe will make the economy his top priority. For Abe, he wrote, “the season of security issues” ended with the enactment of the security bills.

Until next summer’s Upper House poll, Abe will maintain his still-strong influence over Liberal Democratic Party members because they will need to stay united in order to survive the election.

Once the poll is over, his rivals will begin preparing for a post-Abe era that will considerably weaken his influence, Tazaki wrote in an online column published Sept. 7.

“It won’t be an easy task to maintain his clout in the administration because the nation will start questioning the achievements of ‘Abenomics’ and (rival politicians) will openly start moving toward the post-Abe era,” Tazaki wrote.

Abe was re-elected LDP president on Sept. 8, winning another three-year term as head of the ruling party.

Under LDP rules, he cannot run for a third term.

“Any administration will lose much of its political clout in a second term,” Tazaki pointed out.

“(Abe) will no doubt find it more difficult than ever to handle political affairs,” Tazaki wrote.