Japan's ruling coalition at odds over self-defense security scenarios

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's ruling coalition on Tuesday continued to pitch security scenarios to ruling party lawmakers as talks continue this week as to whether Japan's Self-Defense Forces (SDF) will be able to play a greater security role at home and abroad.

The 15 potential situations discussed Tuesday regarding potential security threats Japan may face include "gray zone" scenarios that may not constitute an actual attack on Japan, party officials said.

The ruling Liberal Democratic Party's (LDP) junior New Komeito coalition party ally has insisted that these matters and how Japanese forces may or may not be deployed legally be discussed and debated at more depth.

New Komeito, according to party sources, is willing to discuss the parameters of legal regulations permitting SDF deployment in gray zone situations, because it would not require the reinterpretation of Japan's war-renouncing Constitution that Abe is pushing for.

Natsuo Yamaguchi, the leader of the small ruling party, remains averse to Abe's plans to expand the role of Japan's forces and according to LDP Vice President Masahiko Komura, who is chairing the meeting Tuesday, no agreement has been reached yet.

Tabled for discussions are whether Japan's forces can exercise the right to collective self-defense in such instances as defending an ally, such as the United States, who is under attack, with Abe previously stating that any new legislative paradigms put in place would be for the nation to defend "the lives and livelihoods of the Japanese people."

But against its junior coalition's interests, Abe intends to circumnavigate trying to amend the Constitution, which has remained unchanged since its adoption in 1947, and enable Japan to exercise its right to collective self-defense through a Cabinet decision to change the government's interpretation of it.

After receiving a report on May 15 from his hand-picked private Advisory Panel on Reconstruction of the Legal Basis for Security, Abe said his Cabinet will move towards authorizing the necessary legal measures to allow Japan to exercise the right to collective self-defense, provided the ruling coalition agrees to change the government's long-held, traditional interpretation of the nation' s pacifist Constitution.

Yamaguchi, however, has stated that the Constitution should be a discussion for the Diet, not the Cabinet, and that opposition parties must also be involved in "forging as broad a consensus as possible on anything related to the Constitution."

The New Komeito leader also suggested that the contentious issue of changing Japan's collective self-defense stance is not a matter to be entrusted solely to the Cabinet's discretion.

Observers have said that through current debates with New Komeito and other detractors, and under the threat of a Cabinet reshuffle and leadership changes, Abe is looking to both woo and browbeat his small coalition ally into falling in line.

But New Komeito, whose resistance has gained public traction of late, leading to protests outside the Diet building, believes that refuting the government's own traditional interpretation of its Constitution -- that has always been that Japan has the right to collective self-defense, but is banned by the Constitution from exercising it -- renders the Constitution meaningless and open to future "reinterpretation" whenever the Cabinet, not the Diet or the public, deems necessary.

New Komeito has also stated that the move undermines a key pledge the LDP made that saw both parties originally coalesce.

There are strong opposing voice on the adoption of the right of collective self- defense, not only within the ruling coalition but also from the general public.