Political dynamics aside, even some Defense Agency officials admit the emergency-contingency bills the ruling coalition plans to carry over to the next Diet session were flawed from the start.

The bills, hastily prepared under the initiative of Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, are far from perfect, the officials say, because they are the product of compromise and fail to satisfy either doves or hawks.

The legislation, which would outline how Japan would respond to a military attack, has been a longtime taboo under the war-renouncing Constitution.

To raise support for the legislation, Koizumi tried to seize on the fear created by the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in the United States and an incident in December in which Japan Coast Guard vessels exchanged fire with a suspected North Korean spy ship, which later sank in the East China Sea.

But the proposed legislation fails to address how Japan would respond to these new types of threats, which are now considered greater than more conventional forms of warfare.

Koizumi's Liberal Democratic Party had to strike a compromise with coalition partner New Komeito, which expressed reluctance over expanding the Self-Defense Forces' scope of activities.

Meanwhile, Diet deliberation over the bills has fueled public concern that the legislation may drag Japan into U.S.-led military campaigns in the region.

According to experts, the need for attack-response legislation arose in 1997, when Japan and the U.S. updated their bilateral defense cooperation guidelines, which require Japan to provide logistic support to U.S. military operations in the event of emergencies "in areas surrounding Japan."

The 1999 law to facilitate the bilateral defense guidelines limits Japan to providing logistic support to U.S. forces in noncombat areas.

The proposed attack-response legislation would cover "a military attack situation" or when such a situation is "feared" or "predicted." The definitions in the bills are so vague, according to critics, they leave the door wide open for the government to initiate war preparations under a variety of pretexts.

During Diet discussions on the bills, the opposition camp charged that the legislation could easily be applied if the U.S. military were to intervene in the region, dragging Japan into a conflict -- including deployment of the SDF. The government did little to dispel such concerns.

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yasuo Fukuda told the Diet the situation assumed in the proposed legislation and the one in the 1997 guidelines are different, although he admitted the two can coexist, depending on how things develop.

Fukuda said that if SDF units were attacked while engaged in logistic support for the U.S. in either the open sea or in foreign territories while responding to an "emergency in areas surrounding Japan," this would constitute a "military attack situation."

The gray area surrounding the definition of a "military attack situation" led New Komeito member Masao Akamatsu to comment in the early stages of Diet deliberations, "I feel like I should quit supporting the bills."

Some Defense Agency officials believe that effective defense legislation cannot be achieved as long as the government interprets the Constitution as banning the nation from exercising its right to collective defense.

"The (proposed) legislation is like an operating manual for a tool," a senior agency official said. "It is impossible to write the manual without mentioning what the tool is to be used for."

According to the official, there is no use in discussing the defense bills while the government continues to avoid entering into any substantive debate on Japan's national strategies, including cooperation with the U.S. in security affairs.

"Only the Japanese Communist Party talks (about holding any substantive discussion), claiming the legislation is aimed at involving the nation in a U.S.-led war," the official said.

The bills have also been criticized by local government leaders, who would be directly responsible for the safety of their citizens in times of crisis.

While the legislation would give prefectural governors greater power to allow for smooth military operations under national government instructions, it does not detail measures to be taken to protect the lives and properties of citizens.

The bills call for the government to take additional legislative measures to ensure the public's safety, including measures for evacuation, transportation and communications, and maintenance of social infrastructure and order, within two years of the bills' passage.

Some of the measures could limit the rights of individual citizens.

The government is effectively demanding unconditional public support by proposing emergency legislation that lacks concrete details on how it would be carried out, according to critics.

At a meeting in June of national government officials and prefectural governors in Tokyo, several governors expressed concern that the contents of the additional legislation remain unknown. They were told by government officials that the measures will be prepared within two years.

Hyogo Gov. Toshizo Ido, whose prefecture bore the brunt of the 1995 Great Hanshin Earthquake, said the national government should also clarify what they are empowered to do in emergencies rather than merely asking governors to cooperate with Tokyo, according to officials who briefed reporters.

Gov. Hiroshi Okazaki of Kanagawa Prefecture, which hosts a number of U.S. military installations, including the Atsugi Naval Air Station and Yokosuka naval base, urged the government to present concrete ideas of the envisaged laws that would govern U.S. military activities within Japan during an emergency.

The government and the ruling coalition initially said they would include the U.S. military-related legislation in the current package of bills. However, they eventually dropped the plan because the Foreign Ministry deemed it unnecessary in light of the bilateral Status of Forces Agreement. The proposed legislation again stipulates that the government must prepare such a legislative measure within two years.