Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has acknowledged that his Cabinet's reinterpretation of the Constitution to enable the nation to engage in collective self-defense — taking military action to defend other countries being attacked even when Japan itself is not under attack — has not won sufficient public understanding, following the defeat of the Liberal Democratic Party-backed candidate in the Shiga gubernatorial election on Sunday. The popular approval ratings of his Cabinet in various media polls also plunged in the wake of the July 1 Cabinet decision, which marked a major departure from Japan's postwar defense posture. Abe should realize that this is the price his administration pays for neglecting to seek a mandate from voters in his push to widen the scope of Japan's military role beyond its borders.

Without going through the process to amend the Constitution, which would have required two-thirds approval of both chambers of the Diet plus majority support in a national referendum, the prime minister lifted the decades-long ban on Japan engaging in collective self-defense by changing the interpretation of the war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution in a Cabinet decision after weeks of closed-door talks between the LDP and its coalition partner New Komeito.

The outcome of the Shiga election, in which a former trade ministry bureaucrat backed by the ruling coalition lost out to an ex-Democratic Party of Japan lawmaker, may also have been influenced by other factors, including the problem of sexist taunts by LDP members aimed at female politicians in the Diet and the Tokyo metropolitan assembly. The winner, Taizo Mikazuki, has vowed to carry on outgoing incumbent Gov. Yukiko Kada's nonnuclear agenda just as the Abe administration seeks to brush aside lingering public opposition to restarting idled nuclear power plants nationwide.