As debate rages in the Lower House over Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's contentious security bills, lawmakers have identified one question as key: Would the Self-Defense Forces be allowed to use force on another nation's territory in support of the U.S. military?
Under the pacifist Constitution, Japan has long upheld a self-imposed rule: that it must only defend its own country. Armed units of the SDF should never be deployed to use force overseas because it would exceed the "minimum necessary self-defense" allowed under the postwar Constitution.
Recent Diet sessions have heard Abe insist repeatedly he will stay within this limitation, which until now has been understood to restrict the activities of the SDF to within the Japanese land mass and the surrounding maritime area.