Japan's opposition lawmakers seek to delay war bill vote

Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (top R) looks at opposition lawmakers as they crowd around Masahisa Sato (unseen), deputation chairman of the upper house special committee on security, at an upper house special committee session on security-related legislation at the parliament in Tokyo, Japan, September 17, 2015. [Photo/Agencies]

Such moves, which have raised tensions Thursday in the upper chamber and rattled the nerves of the ruling coalition who though the enactment of the bills would be elementary due to their majority voting power in both chambers of parliament, will likely include the DPJ delaying the upper house vote for as long as possible by potentially boycotting the vote, and, if the ruling camp proceed to enact the bills, submitting to parliament's lower chamber a non-confidence motion against Abe's cabinet and a censure motion against Abe himself in the upper house.

The ruling camp, in which case, may then be forced to use the 60-day proviso, meaning that if the upper house fails to vote on the legislation within a 60 day period, the bills will be sent back to the lower house to be voted on.

And while the ruling coalition can use its two-thirds majority in the more powerful lower chamber to enact the bills, the move would grant the opposition camp more time to regroup and further plan how to derail Abe's plans to remilitarize a reluctant Japan.

While political wrangling continues in the upper house, regular members of the public are continuing to show their disproval of the government's plans to allow Japan's Self-Defense Forces an expanded operational scope at home and abroad, including potentially being involved in combative U.S.-led missions, which could see Japanese troops dragged into combat zones and expected to take offensive action for the first time since WWII, with mass protests around the country, the most visible being at the National Diet building itself in the heart of Tokyo.

Around 35,000 protestors, according to the demonstration's organizers, amassed throughout the night Wednesday, with numbers also beginning to swell Thursday, as riot police buses failed to contain the numbers of demonstrators within the police designated zone.

The demonstrators are united in their call for Japan's constitution to be upheld, the unconstitutional war bills to be scrapped and for Abe to step down as prime minister for his continued bellicose ways and unilateral method of governance that saw his cabinet unilaterally reinterpret key clauses of the Constitution before ramming the publicly repelled war bills through the lower house in July.