Protesters Rally Across Japan Against Controversial Security Bills

TOKYO, JAPAN - AUG. 30: Students, mothers and other protesters staged rallies at more than 200 locations across Japan on Sunday, calling for the scrapping of controversial security legislation that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants to enact to strengthen the role of Japanese forces abroad. A major rally in front of the Diet building in central Tokyo attracted around 120,000 protesters, according to the organizers. Opposition party leaders such as Katsuya Okada, head of the Democratic Party of Japan, and Kazuo Shii, chairman of the Japanese Communist Party, also joined the event. The opposition leaders vowed to work together to urge Abe's government to give up on the bills, with DPJ head Okada saying, "The Abe administration must understand that ordinary citizens have a sense of crisis and are angry." DPJ Secretary General Yukio Edano said in Iwate Prefecture, "It will not be democracy" if the public's calls against the bills are ignored. The JCP's Shii said, "We will definitely bring the bills to an end by expanding the campaign against them across Japan." The leaders of two other opposition parties also took part in the Tokyo rally. The bills would greatly expand the Self-Defense Forces' operations overseas and allow Japan to exercise the right to collective self-defense, or coming to the aid of the United States or other friendly nations under armed attack even if Japan itself is not attacked. The legislation would be a major shift in Japan's post-World War II exclusively defense-oriented security policy. Given the ruling coalition's dominance in the House of Representatives, a second vote in the chamber could pass the bills into law with a two-thirds majority, even if the House of Councillors fails to put them to a vote within 60 days of their passage by the lower house under the Diet's "60-day rule."