TOKYO, Sept. 19 (Xinhua) -- Japan abandoned its 70-year pacifism since the end of World War II as the parliament's upper house on early Saturday enacted a controversial legislation pushed by the government under Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
The legislation's enactment marked an overhaul in Japan's purely defensive defense posture, meaning the country could dispatch its troops overseas to engage in armed conflicts for the first time in seven decades.
However, the country's war-renouncing Constitution bans its Self-Defense Forces (SDF) from doing so or exercising the right to collective self-defense.
Over 90 percent of Japan's constitutional experts believe that the legislation violates the Japanese supreme law.
The parliament's all-powerful lower house passed the bills in July.
Under the newly enacted legislation, Japan will create a permanent law to allow its SDF to carry out logistical support missions for foreign militaries in international peacekeeping operations, and 10 other existing security-related laws will be revised.
The enactment came after major opposition parties' tactics to delay the upper house vote by filing censure motions against the prime minister and the chairman of a panel under the chamber, as well as no-confidence motions against Abe's cabinet and the chamber's speaker.
On Thursday, rowdy scenes erupted when an upper house panel voted on the bills as opposition party lawmakers surrounded and mobbed the panel's chairman.
However, all of the motions filed Friday were voted down as the ruling bloc that groups Abe's Liberal Democratic Party and its small partner, the Komeito Party, secured the majority in both parliament chambers.
Tetsuro Fukuyama, a lawmaker from Japan's largest opposition party, the Democratic Party of Japan, said in his final statement at the upper house before the passage of the bills that the forced passage is intolerable as the move violates Japan's postwar pacifism and democratic system.
There are still unresolved questions in the bills and to enact such questionable bills is intolerable, said the lawmaker, adding that the ruling camp showed its arrogance on the issue by disregarding political heavyweights' opinions. 1/2 12下一页尾页