Editor's note: Li Shuaiyu, a special commentator for CGTN, is a lecturer at the School of International Relations, Beijing Foreign Studies University. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

At the US Supreme Court, originalists, textualists and pragmatists have long debated how to interpret the US Constitution, and the justices often split over a single clause. But ask them to assess the Japanese Constitution, first drafted by American occupation officials, in light of Tokyo's recent security policy and military buildup, and they might reach a rare unanimous verdict.

Some of Tokyo's measures have gone beyond the text of Article 9, which renounces war and the threat or use of force in international disputes, prohibiting maintaining land, sea, and air forces or other war potential. Others follow the letter but have abandoned the spirit of permanent peace.

The real question is how much credibility remains in a constitution that helped Japan return to the international community after the fall of militarism with a promise of peace.

That promise was never absolute. Rearmament began under Shigeru Yoshida when he was Japan's prime minister. But even Yoshida and the cabinets that followed him treated Article 9 as a real constraint, not merely a slogan. Japan built up forces to support its alliance with the US, but it also imposed additional limits that were not explicitly required by the constitution: the Three Non-Nuclear Principles that Japan will not possess, produce, and permit the introduction of nuclear weapons into its territory, a cap on defense spending of about 1% of gross national product and a near-total ban on arms exports.

Two of those limits are now gone. Defense spending reached 2% of GDP in 2025, and in April 2026 the cabinet lifted the ban on exporting lethal weapons. Constitutional revision, once taboo, is now an official goal. After the Liberal Democratic Party won a two-thirds majority in the House of Representatives in the February 2026 election, Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi promised to hold a referendum on revising the constitution as soon as possible.

However, the bigger change has come without any amendment. The peace clauses have been hollowed out through successive reinterpretations.

The clearest case is Article 9. Successive Japanese governments argued that this still allows the minimum force necessary for self-defense. This reading went beyond the plain words, but it still had a clear logic: The forces existed only to defend Japan itself.

Then in 2014, then Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's cabinet reinterpreted the article to allow collective self-defense, without changing a word. Under the 2015 security laws, Japan may use force when an attack on a close partner threatens Japan's survival. Here practice has left the text behind.

The 2022 National Security Strategy went further and committed Japan to long-range counterstrike capabilities. Officials insist that Japan will not strike first; it may strike back only after an enemy has begun an attack. The text survives, but its force now depends on political discretion.

Article 9 still matters when the government chooses to invoke it. In March 2026, Takaichi cited it to turn down a US request to send naval forces during the Iran conflict. Yet the same government stretches the article when it wants more room to act, as with collective self-defense and counterstrike. Article 9 becomes a wall when the government wants to say no, and a door when it wants to say yes. A limit that binds only when it is convenient is not a commitment others can rely on.

It is not the only clause under strain. Articles 20 and 89 separate religion and state, a lesson from the prewar use of State Shinto – using indigenous Shinto traditions to unite government, politics, and society under the authority of the emperor – to rally the nation for war.

The notorious Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo has enshrined 14 Class-A war criminals with the ordinary war dead since 1978, testing these clauses. Takaichi has not visited the shrine as prime minister, but she has sent offerings under her official title, and members of her cabinet have gone in person. Such visits are called private but when the minister in charge of the Self-Defense Forces goes, he sends exactly the signal these clauses were meant to prevent.

A quieter change concerns Article 66(2), which requires the prime minister and other ministers to be civilians. The civilian clause was a safety fuse for Article 9: If Japan ever had an army again, civilians would control it. But on the 80th anniversary of the war's end, former Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba warned that civilian control today is only a system; it means nothing unless it is properly used.

That warning fits the present. Since 2013, Japan has increasingly concentrated national security decision-making in the prime minister's office. The changes include the establishment of a National Security Council and its secretariat; a 2015 law ending the formal priority of civilian officials over uniformed officers in the Defense Ministry; a permanent Joint Operations Command in 2025; and this year, a national intelligence council chaired by the prime minister.

None of this breaks the letter of Article 66. Civilians still hold final authority, and a defense operation still needs the approval Diet, Japan's national legislature. But postwar civilian control meant more than a civilian at the top. It was a set of checks, including the Diet, the cabinet as a whole, civilian officials and Article 9 itself, that made war slow and hard to choose. The present reforms strengthen the prime minister while weakening the rest. When a smaller group decides faster, with stronger forces and fewer checks, who corrects its mistakes?

Japan today remains a democracy, where citizens can freely express their views, organize and oppose changes to Article 9, and many do. However, this does not diminish the need to remain vigilant against the growing push for remilitarization by Japan's right-wing forces. The country's accelerating military buildup and the gradual loosening of its postwar constraints raise serious concerns about the future of its commitment to peaceful development.

A rule should mean what it says, or be changed in the open, never emptied out in silence. International relations theory points the same way. Deterrence works when red lines are clear, and so does reassurance. When Japan's neighbors cannot tell where its limits really lie, each of them has to plan for the worst. A promise can be hollowed out without anyone announcing it, and then no one can be sure what it still promises. And when Japan's word can no longer be taken at face value, the whole region becomes less stable.

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