The government's security legislation — which would lift Japan's long-standing ban on acts of collective self-defense and significantly expand the scope of Self-Defense Forces' overseas missions — remains unpopular among the public, as shown in various opinion polls, even as Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's ruling coalition prepares to push it through the Upper House this week. Abe himself admits that popular support for the legislation has not grown even after four months of Diet deliberations.

But why? Abe earlier lamented that labeling of the bills by part of the opposition camp as "war legislation" gave the wrong impression to the public. He said the legislation is instead aimed at beefing up Japan's security deterrence and preventing the nation from being drawn into war.

The legislation's shaky legal grounds also became a focus of the Diet deliberations, but doubts cast by constitutional scholars and even former chiefs of the Cabinet Legislation Bureau about the legislation's constitutionality were in effect dismissed by administration officials, who repeatedly said they are convinced that the bills are constitutional. Some even suggested that they don't care about scholarly opinions, with the most candid remark coming from a close aide of the prime minister who said that legal stability does not matter when the government weighs a security policy to defend the nation. Abe said lawmakers would not be fulfilling their duty by sticking to the conventional interpretation of the Constitution in the face of changing international security circumstances, but concern remains that his act of changing the government's interpretation of the Constitution with a Cabinet decision shakes the foundation of the nation's legal stability.