Can Takaichi Finish What Abe Could Not?

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Six months into her premiership, Sanae Takaichi faces the question that long confronted her predecessors: can political momentum be turned into constitutional revision?

For the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), amending the country's supreme law is more than just a policy goal. It has served as the party's founding principle since 1955. For Takaichi, the issue is personal. Shinzo Abe, her political mentor, made constitutional revision a core ambition of his career, but never achieved it. 

The timing is favorable in many respects. Conflict in the Middle East has rattled energy markets. China's military and economic pressure on Japan and its neighborhood continues unabated. Global geopolitics, above all, is undergoing a seismic shift. 

At home, Prime Minister Takaichi and her party have moved to consolidate power after a coalition realignment and commanding a historic lower house election triumph in February.

Takaichi Takes the Mantle

The prime minister has already signaled her intent. At the LDP's annual convention in Tokyo on April 12, Takaichi said that by next year's party gathering, she hoped there would be a clear prospect of submitting a constitutional amendment proposal. 

She also called for asking voters directly in a referendum whether the nation should "turn a new page in the book of history."

Central to the debate is Article 9, the constitution's pacifist clause, drafted under the US-led occupation in 1946. Its first paragraph renounces war and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes. Its second paragraph states that "land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained."

The result has long been a glaring constitutional contradiction. Japan has for decades maintained a military in all but name, even though the text appears to forbid one.

For now, Takaichi is not taking the most sweeping revisionist line. She is not, for instance, calling for the outright removal of Paragraph 2. Instead, she appears to back the mainstream LDP position of keeping both existing paragraphs intact while adding a new clause recognizing the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) and Japan's right to take the necessary measures for self-defense.

The Article 9 Question

That may sound modest, but wording still matters. The SDF already exists and enjoys broad public trust. For decades, successive governments have interpreted Article 9 as permitting the minimum force necessary for self-defense. 

But that reading has always rested on a legal balance and ambiguity. Writing the SDF into the constitution would not suddenly turn Japan into a normal military power, nor would it by itself scrap the nation's postwar pacifist identity. What it would do is give the force a legal footing and weaken the argument that it exists in tension with the constitution itself.

That is why some supporters see the proposal as more than symbolic. It would likely settle—at least politically—a question that has long hovered over Japan after WWII. And once the SDF is explicitly recognized in the constitution, future debates over defense policy and what the force can and cannot do may begin from a different baseline.

Public opinion appears more receptive than in the past. A joint survey by The Sankei Shimbun and FNN on April 18 and 19 found 59.3% support for clearly mentioning the SDF in Article 9. Backing was highest among respondents aged 18 to 29, at 70.1%, while respondents in their 30s and 40s were also over 60% mark.

Uphill Battle Begins 

So does the Takaichi government have a clear path ahead? Not quite.

Favorable polling alone does not by itself deliver change. Japan's amendment process was deliberately made challenging. Any proposal must first win the support of at least two-thirds of all members in both houses of the Diet. Only then can it go to a national referendum, where it must secure a simple majority of votes cast.

That is where Takaichi's uphill battle begins. Her approval ratings have remained firm despite higher oil prices and broader economic and geopolitical unease, giving her political capital. But the ruling camp still lacks the two-thirds majority in the upper house to initiate the process. Conservatives are also not fully united on how far revision should go.

The public is far from settled either. Japan's harsher security environment, from the Iran crisis to growing concern over China, has heightened awareness of deterrence and of the legal constraints under which Japan operates. This may give revisionists a stronger argument than before. Yet for some, the old fears linger. For others, a more dangerous world may justify a more muscular security posture without constitutional change.

That divide was visible on April 19, when opponents of constitutional revision gathered outside the National Diet under the slogan, "NO WAR! Don't Change the Constitution!" Organizers said some 36,000 people attended. Participants cast the government's agenda as a threat to Japan's postwar pacifism.

Even so, Takaichi has made her opening move. The question now is whether she can turn public sympathy and anxiety into parliamentary numbers—and, ultimately, a referendum majority.

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Author: Kenji Yoshida

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