This seems like it would be more at home in probably any other country in the world except the almost reserved to a fault Japan.
Japan’s lawmakers nearly came to blows whilst debating a bill on amending the mandate of the country’s military on Thursday.
Japan’s military, The Self Defence Force, is quite unique in the world as their mandate explicitly calls for them to engage others only in self defence. The Pacifist clause has been in place since 1947, when Japan instituted a new constitution in the wake of suffering massive losses during World War II.
In a moment of great irony, the opposition who were fighting to keep the ‘let’s not fight’ mandate kinda resorted to violence to get their point across.
But Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his ruling coalition managed to get the bill passed nevertheless.
Japan’s constitution states in Article 9 that “Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.”
The new bill reinterprets that, allowing the military to take part in some wars, particularly to help Japan’s allies.
See photos of the fun parliamentary session below…
