Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi pledged Tuesday to put the nation on a reform path to meet the challenge of a rapidly changing world, and to this end presented his party's blueprint to amend the Constitution for the first time to bring the charter in line with global realities.
Koizumi's pledge came as part of a celebration of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party's 50th anniversary.
The draft of the new Constitution, the centerpiece of the party's birthday, revises Clause 2 of the war-renouncing Article 9 to allow Japan to possess in name what it already has in the form of the Self-Defense Forces -- a military.