Japanese voters are deeply divided over Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s campaign to revise the country’s 70-year-old pacifist constitution, according to a poll released on Wednesday against a backdrop of anxiety arising from North Korean tensions.
The Nikkei Inc/TV Tokyo survey, published on the constitution’s anniversary, did show momentum growing in support of Abe’s push to revise a charter that was written by the United States after Japan’s defeat in World War Two and never amended.
The poll showed some 46 percent of respondents favored keeping the constitution as it is, four percentage points lower than a similar poll last year.
The number favoring a change stood at 45 percent, up five percentage points from a year ago.
Nuclear-armed North Korea has over the past year stepped up missile tests, the most recent of which was a failed launch on Saturday.
Pyongyang accused the United States on Tuesday of pushing the Korean peninsula to the brink of nuclear war after a pair of strategic U. S. bombers flew training drills with the South Korean and Japanese air forces.
Abe on Monday cited the increasing severity of the « security situation » as a factor showing the time was right to take the « historic step toward the large goal of constitutional reform, » according to Kyodo News.
