After a 17-month hiatus, a Lower House panel on amending the pacifist Constitution resumed deliberations Thursday, a breakthrough in Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's long-stalled effort to revise the national charter.
Thursday's debate by the panel zeroed in on the long-standing assertion by conservative forces that Japan's supreme law was "imposed" by the Allied Powers in the aftermath of World War II and therefore devoid of the nation's own will — a logic often used to justify an amendment.
Lawmaker Gen Nakatani, who represented the majority Liberal Democratic Party on the panel, said: "It is an incontrovertible fact that the GHQ (General Headquarters of the Allied Powers) intervened to draft the Constitution."