Spotlight: Japan's security laws take effect, triggering extensive criticism

Japan's new controversial security laws took effect Tuesday, marking an overhaul of the country's exclusively defensive defense posture in the last seven decades.

The new laws, which enable Japanese troops to fight overseas, have drawn wide criticism from the international community for threatening to destabilize security and peace in the Asia-Pacific region.

Although the security laws are becoming effective, their unconstitutional nature does not change, Chief of Japan Institute of Constitutional Law Makoto Ito told Xinhua on Tuesday. And almost all the country's constitutional experts and lawyers believe the security laws violate the Supreme Law.

Ito said he will continue requiring the retraction of the security laws and he will file a lawsuit with 600 other lawyers over the unconstitutionality of the security legislation in late April.

Meanwhile, Japanese political commentator Jiro Honzawa said in his blog that the security laws will lead to Japan's military expansion and therefore may trigger a regional arms race.

The unconstitutional security legislation overturned Japanese history in the past seven decades as it does not face up to history, Honzawa said.

Yang Baoyun, an ASEAN expert with Thailand's Thammasat University, said that the security laws pose a severe challenge to peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region.

"The security legislation will break the regional geopolitics and international peace since World War II," said Yang, adding the legislation is aimed at paving the way for the right-wing extremists to revise the Peace Constitution.

Allowing the nation to exercise the right to collective self-defense, the legislation will bring the Asia-Pacific region, Southeast Asia and East Asia more new dilemmas as the present situation has grown increasingly complex, said the expert.

Yang's opinions were echoed by Thitinan Pongsudhirak, director of the Institute of Security and International Studies at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University, who also believed that the new security laws will impinge on regional geopolitics and add to security dilemmas in the region, especially in the maritime domain.

"With its security legislation taking effect, Japan took the first step to become a military power," said Kim Yeoul-Soo, an international politics professor at Sungshin Women's University.

The professor warned that the legislation could also help boost an arms race in Northeast Asia.

If the ruling coalition wins the number of seats needed to amend its pacifist constitution during the upcoming Upper House election in July, Japan will head into revising the constitution, Kim said.

"The Lower House has already won the necessary seats for the amendment. Generally speaking, it has a meaning that Japan took the first step to become a military power," said the professor. Endi