When she announced a snap general election at a press conference on Jan. 19, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi cited proactive fiscal spending, a drastic strengthening of security policy, and the development of intelligence capabilities as among her priorities, issues which have proved divisive among the public.

Constitutional revision, a long-standing goal of her Liberal Democratic Party, was included in its platform for the Feb 8 election, which the party won by a landslide, securing 316 of the 465 seats in the House of Representatives.

In speeches toward the end of campaigning, Takaichi called for support to revise the Constitution to position the Self-Defense Forces "as an organization with real power." Following its sweeping election victory, the LDP, after securing the chairmanship of the lower house's Commission on the Constitution, is expected to push for the revision, a move that could split public opinion.

The LDP's platform presented the same four-item constitutional revision outline that it hammered out in 2018: explicitly naming the SDF by adding a new Article 9-2; creating an emergency clause; addressing the merger of House of Councillors electoral districts while clarifying the status of basic and wide-area local governments; and enhancing the central government's role in education.

The coalition agreement signed by the LDP and the Japan Innovation Party in October stated revisions to Article 9 and the creation of an emergency clause as goals, with the two parties setting up a joint council the following month to draft the language.

Notably, the agreement's approach to revising Article 9 is said to reflect the JIP's proposal in September, titled "21st Century National Defense Concept and Constitutional Revision," which resembles the LDP's April 2012 draft clause more than its 2018 outline.

Under the JIP proposal, the first paragraph of Article 9, which renounces war, would not be revised, but the second paragraph, barring the maintenance of land, sea and air forces as well as other war potential, would be deleted.

The aim is to shift from an exclusively defense-oriented posture to "active defense" that would allow the full exercise of collective self-defense in a counterattack if a closely related country is attacked. At present, such action is limited to cases presenting a "survival-threatening situation."

To enable such a full exercise, the proposal seeks to add explicit provisions on the right of self-defense and the maintenance of a national defense force, while also seeking legislation on the status of service members, civilian control and military courts.

Collective self-defense, judging from past examples, has often been used as a pretext by major powers when invading smaller countries, such as the former Soviet Union's 1979 invasion of Afghanistan. Enabling the full exercise of collective self-defense would amount to opening the door to military aggression.

The dangers inherent in invoking the right of self-defense must be considered because the very idea of self-defense can at times entail boundless offensive potential.

Israel's invasion of Gaza since October 2023 has made that point explicit. An independent panel of the U.N. Human Rights Council said in September that Israel's actions amount to genocide, the gravest crime under international law.

Such actions by Israel could be justified in the name of "self-defense," with some countries, including the members of the Group of Seven, accepting such claims. That means society must confront the problem of complicity.

I have serious concerns about discussions on constitutional revision moving forward without that perspective.

Aisa Kiyosue is a constitutional law scholar who has been a professor at the Muroran Institute of Technology since 2021.

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