[John Scott]

Japan passed into law yesterday rules for revising the country’s pacifist constitution for the first time in 60 years, a central goal of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

The upper house of parliament approved the law a month after it passed through the lower house.

The law, which will be enacted in 2010, sets procedures for a national referendum should a constitutional amendment pass both chambers of parliament by a two-thirds vote.

The law reflects Abe’s aim to allow Japan to assert itself militarily for the first time since the end of the Second World War. The 1947 document, written by US occupation forces after Japan’s defeat, renounces war as a sovereign right and forbids military forces.

“We now have a legal framework for the procedures of revising the constitution,” Abe said at his official residence. “It’s important to debate this broadly and deeply in a calm environment.”

Japan maintains a 240000-strong Self-Defence Force that courts have ruled is legal over the objection of pacifist groups.

Abe, Japan’s first prime minister born after the war, says the constitution is outdated as it forbids the right of collective self-defence — to defend an ally that is attacked — in a nuclear age riven by international terrorism.

In a statement on May 3, the 60th anniversary of the document’s adoption, Abe called for “a bold review of the postwar regime all the way back to its origins and an in-depth discussion of the constitution” which had become “incapable of adapting to the great changes taking place”.

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