The vice president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, which is working on a proposal to amend the postwar Constitution for the first time, says the principle of civilian control of the Self-Defense Forces should be made clear through an addition to the war-renouncing Article 9.
"We should put in writing the relationship between (the SDF), the Cabinet and the Diet," Masahiko Komura said in a recent interview.
Since its founding in 1955, the LDP has aimed to revise the Constitution, which was drawn up during the U.S.-led Occupation after World War II and came into force in 1947. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and like-minded lawmakers see the supreme charter as having been imposed on the Japanese people.