For the late professor Yasuhiro Okudaira, preserving Japan's war-renouncing Constitution was his lifeblood.

Now constitutional scholars of his ilk are intent on continuing his legacy in the face of the government's staunch bid to reinterpret the charter.

Miho Aoi, who had planned to study mathematics as an undergraduate at International Christian University in Tokyo, turned her focus to social science after attending a series of lectures by Okudaira in the 1990s.