Feature: About 37,000 protesters rally against Japan's controversial security laws in Tokyo

Some 37,000 demonstrators gathered around the Japanese National Diet building on Tuesday protesting the controversial security laws which came into effect on the day and demanding the retraction of the legislation due to its unconstitutional nature.

The protesters held posters that read "War is over," "Retract the security laws immediately" and "Abe administration step down" and shouted they oppose the security laws and protect the country's war-renouncing constitution.

The security legislation was designed by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to enhance Japan's alliance with the United States by exercising the right to collective self-defense, meaning that under the new legislation, Japan could dispatch its Self-Defense Forces (SDF) overseas to engage in armed conflicts for the first time in 70 years even if Japan itself is not attacked.

However, the Japanese Supreme Law, known as the pacifist constitution, bans the SDF from involving in combat outside Japanese territories and from exercising the right to collective defense.

During the rally, Yukio Edano, secretary-general of the newly launched opposition party of the Democratic Party, said that the Abe administration disregarded the constitution so that it has lost its legality, adding that it is the "individual defense right" rather than the "collective defense" that the country needs to protect.

Kikuko Yamaguchi, 66, said the government ignored the public voices over the legislation, adding that Japan vowed to renounce war seven decades ago and it has been enshrined in the country's constitution.

"I don't want my children and grandsons to go to the battlefield," Yamaguchi told Xinhua.

Nahoko Hishiyama, a member of the rally's organizers, said that what the prime minister has done trampled on the country's democratic system as he refuses to pay attention to the opposite voices from the public and the academy.

"As the Diet has not debate on the bill filed by the opposition parties requiring the retraction of the security laws, what we could do is to ask prime minister Abe to step down," the 26-year-old said.

Although the security laws became effective, the Japanese government, however, delayed the timetable for the SDF to play its enlarged role in order to avoid further criticism from the public ahead of this summer's upper house election.

The election is seen by Abe as significant for his ruling camp to launch a constitution amendment motion in the future if the ruling bloc secures two thirds majority in the chamber.

On Sunday, two largest opposition parties merged and formed the largest opposition party since the Abe administration came into being in late 2012. The newly launched party, the Democratic Party, vowed to make the issue of the security laws a main debate topic in the upcoming upper house election.

"We have to stop the 'reckless driving'of the Abe administration. This is the last chance to realize the politics in which it is possible to change ruling parties," Katsuya Okada, chief of the new opposition party, said in his party's recent inaugural convention in Tokyo. Endit