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Emperor Showa meets General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, at the US Embassy in Akasaka, Tokyo, September 1945.<\/p>\nSix months into her premiership, Sanae Takaichi faces the question that long confronted her predecessors: can political momentum be turned into constitutional revision?<\/p>\n
For the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), amending the country’s supreme law is more than a policy goal. It has served as the party’s founding principle since 1955. For Takaichi, the issue is personal. Shinzo Abe, her political mentor, made constitutional revision a core ambition of his career, but never achieved it.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The timing is favorable in many respects. Conflict in the Middle East has rattled energy markets. China’s military and economic pressure on Japan and its neighborhood continues unabated. Global geopolitics, above all, is undergoing a seismic shift.\u00a0<\/p>\n
At home, Prime Minister Takaichi and her party have moved to consolidate power after a coalition realignment and commanding a historic lower house election triumph in February.<\/p>\n
Whether she can seize the mantle and carry Abe’s unfinished project over the goal line may become one of the defining tests of her tenure.<\/p>\n
Takaichi Takes the Mantle<\/p>\n
The incumbent has already signaled intent. At the LDP’s annual convention in Tokyo on April 12, Takaichi said that by next year’s party gathering, she hoped there would be a clear prospect of submitting a constitutional amendment proposal.\u00a0<\/p>\n
She also called for asking voters directly in a referendum whether the nation should “turn a new page in the book of history.”<\/p>\n
Central to the debate is Article 9, the constitution’s pacifist clause, drafted under the US-led occupation in 1946. Its first paragraph renounces war and the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes. Its second paragraph states that “land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained.”<\/p>\n
Emperor Showa meets General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, at the US Embassy in Akasaka, Tokyo, September 1945.<\/p>\n
The result has long been a glaring constitutional contradiction. Japan has for decades maintained a military in all but name, even though the text appears to forbid one.<\/p>\n
For now, Takaichi is not taking the most sweeping revisionist line. She is not, for instance, calling for the outright removal of Paragraph 2. Instead, she appears to back the mainstream LDP position<\/a> of keeping both existing paragraphs intact while adding a new clause recognizing the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) and Japan’s right to take the necessary measures for self-defense.<\/p>\n The Article 9 Question<\/p>\n That may sound modest, but wording still matters. The SDF already exists and enjoys broad public trust. For decades, successive governments have interpreted Article 9 as permitting the minimum force necessary for self-defense<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n But that reading has always rested on a legal balance and ambiguity. Writing the SDF into the constitution would not suddenly turn Japan into a normal military power, nor would it by itself scrap the nation’s postwar pacifist identity. What it would do is give the force a legal footing and weaken the argument that it exists in tension with the constitution itself.<\/p>\n That is why some supporters see the proposal as more than symbolic. It would likely settle\u2014at least politically\u2014a question that has long hovered over Japan after WWII. And once the SDF is explicitly recognized in the constitution, future debates over defense policy and what the force can and cannot do may begin from a different baseline.<\/p>\n Public opinion appears more receptive than in the past. A joint survey by The Sankei Shimbun and FNN<\/a> on April 18 and 19 found 59.3% support for clearly mentioning the SDF in Article 9. Backing was highest among respondents aged 18 to 29, at 70.1%, while respondents in their 30s and 40s were also over 60% mark.<\/p>\n
So does the Takaichi government have a clear path ahead? Not quite.<\/p>\n Favorable polling alone does not by itself deliver change. Japan’s amendment process was deliberately made challenging. Any proposal must first win the support of at least two-thirds of all members in both houses of the Diet. Only then can it go to a national referendum, where it must secure a simple majority of votes cast.<\/p>\n That is where Takaichi’s uphill battle begins. Her approval ratings have remained firm despite higher oil prices and broader economic and geopolitical unease, giving her political capital. But the ruling camp still lacks the two-thirds majority in the upper house to initiate the process. Conservatives are not fully united<\/a>, either, on how far revision should go.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/ERIQ7OTJUZPFTG46MWRU52T4S4-1024x624.webp\")
Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi (right) meets with Hirofumi Yoshimura, leader of the LDP’s junior coalition Ishin no Kai, at the Diet on February 9.\u2028(\u00a9Sankei\/Ataru Haruna)<\/p>\n
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\nUphill Battle Begins\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/TN5ZP2ZKUJHN5GEYVWSMW2OA6A-1024x706.webp\")
Protest rally against constitutional revision in front of the main gate of the National Diet, April 19, Chiyoda Ward, Tokyo (\u00a9Sankei\/Shimpei Okuhara)<\/p>\n