When Prime Minister Shinzo Abe loosened the limits of the pacifist Constitution to drop a ban on the Self-Defense Forces fighting overseas, many experts said it was a step toward becoming a "normal country" able to do more in its own defense.
But Ichiro Ozawa, a one-time kingmaker who coined the phrase two decades ago, says Abe's policy is fundamentally different and risks leading Japan down a path with dangerous echoes of prewar militarism.
Abe's Cabinet took a step away from Japan's postwar pacifism this month by dropping a ban on exercising the right of "collective self-defense," or aiding a country under attack. That prohibition has kept troops from fighting abroad since 1945.