Abe's doggedness on hawkish new security laws could be his undoing

JAPAN'S Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has revealed an iron fist in his velvet glove by the steely determination he has shown in pushing through controversial new security laws.

The question now is whether popular reaction might prove to be strong enough to floor him in 2016 elections. It has become clear that enacting the new security legislation - diluting Japan's postwar "pacifist" Constitution in the process - was Mr Abe's mission from the start. "Abenomics", promising a strong new Japanese economy, appears as something designed to sweeten the bitter pill. Whatever outsiders might think about Mr Abe's economic policies (and Abenomics appears to have lost some of its credibility overseas), the fact is that foreign enthusiasm for the new security legislation is at odds with the view of most Japanese, some 60 per cent of whom are opposed to it.

Two Bills amend existing security laws, lifting restrictions on Japan's Self-Defense Forces (SDF), including the constitutional ban on collective self-defence and creating a new permanent law enabling the SDF to provide logistic support for some United Nations-authorised military operations. Some believe this simply makes Japan a more "normal" nation able to engage in collective self-defence and fulfil its international obligations. Others see it as the thin end of a wedge designed to blur and subvert the pacifist features of Japan's Constitution. Many in Japan are still haunted by memories of how the Japanese military seized control of political power in the 1930s - with disastrous consequences for the nation and for the rest of Asia. Arguments as to how serious all this is are the subject of much debate outside Parliament. But what the tens of thousands of ordinary Japanese who turned out last week to rally against the new security laws object to is the way change has been rammed through the legislature.