"If the Article 9 revision takes the currently defense-only SDF to a totally different stage, we can't tolerate it at all," she said in an interview with Jiji Press.

Renho said the Abe administration maneuvered to make the country's new national security laws compatible with the spirit of Article 9 while trampling on the conventional interpretation of the pacifist article.

To clarify the existence of the SDF in Article 9 would widen the range of interpretation of the article, possibly helping expand the scope of its activities without limits, she warned. The security laws, enforced in March 2016, allow the nation to exercise the right to collective self-defense.

The first of the two paragraphs of Article 9 states that 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 second stipulates that Japan will never have "land, sea and air forces, as well as other war potential." (Jiji Press)