Amid plunging public support for his Cabinet due to the fallout from the Moritomo Gakuen scandal that implicates the Finance Ministry and his wife in a suspicious real estate deal and accusations of a cover-up, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is charging ahead to change Article 9 of the Constitution, which states that Japan renounces war as a sovereign right.
And he is right to do so.
Abe's long-held desire to amend Japan's postwar pacifist Constitution is well known. He renewed his promise to revise the charter to legalize unequivocally the Self-Defense Forces in a speech at the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's annual convention last Sunday.