EVER since its founding in 1955, the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) has wanted to write a constitution to replace the ultraliberal one which America drafted for the devastated country in a matter of days in 1946. Throwing off the framework imposed by the former occupiers is the life’s work of Shinzo Abe, the prime minister. Along with a hoped-for rebound in the economy, rewriting the constitution lies at the heart of his notions for a revived Japan.

Many Japanese who do not support Mr Abe’s right-wing views also favour revision, at least of article nine. This is what makes the constitution a pacifist one, for in it Japan renounces war as a sovereign right and even vows not to keep a standing army, air force or navy. Japan’s sense of itself as a pacifist nation remains extremely popular. But according to the constitution’s current interpretation, Japan may not even come to the aid of allies if they are attacked. Re-interpreting, rather than amending, the constitution would legitimise collective self-defence. Still, for many Japanese it rankles that Japan’s “self-defence forces”, formed in 1954 and among the world’s most sophisticated armed forces, cannot call themselves a standing army. There is broad support for changing the constitution, which has never been amended, so that they can. It is a matter of national pride as much as anything else.

Even this slight shift away from Japan’s pacifist creed would be controversial. Yet Mr Abe and his party aim to go much further than that. Last year the LDP published a draft constitution that seemed to turn the clock back to a more traditional, even controlled society. Gen Nakatani, head of the LDP’s task force for amending the constitution, complains that in contemporary Japan it “is all about praising freedom and rights”. In society, he says, “there need to be obligations as well.”

The LDP’s draft is heavily influenced by Mr Abe’s revisionist wing of the party. The revisionists gloss over militarist Japan’s atrocities in the region and want Japanese children to be taught a beautified picture of a past in which a harmonious society thrived under the fond gaze of the emperor. The draft elevates the concept of “public order” as a limit on individual freedom. It restores the emperor as the head of the state, and even seems to remove his obligation to uphold the constitution. It deletes entirely an article in the current document guaranteeing human rights. To a clause on equal rights written by the late Beate Sirota, a 22-year-old American interpreter at the time who is a heroine among Japanese feminists for her advocacy of women’s rights, the LDP adds a homily on the family, whose members, it says, must help each other.

Until recently, the draft came in for little outside scrutiny. That is changing, as the LDP’s full intent becomes clear. During Mr Abe’s first term as prime minister, in 2006-07, he prepared the ground by passing a law on how to hold a national referendum when amending the constitution. Article 96 of the constitution stipulates that any change requires a two-thirds majority in both houses of the Diet, plus the consent of a majority of those voting in a referendum. In the lower house, Mr Abe’s party already has enough seats if it joins forces with other pro-revision parties. In an election for the upper house on July 21st, the LDP hopes to win enough seats alongside its allies to be able to muster a two-thirds majority there, too. Mr Abe’s referendum law requires no minimum turnout.

Tensions with North Korea and China could boost public support for a change to article nine, says Mr Nakatani. Yet the party has decided not to target this article first. Even the LDP’s coalition partner, New Komeito, is against the LDP’s revision. Instead, Mr Abe wants first to lower the hurdle for change. By amending article 96, he wants to scale down the requirement for revising the constitution, from two-thirds of both houses down to a simple majority. If this amendment is passed, it would make other articles of Japan’s constitution much easier to revise.

Even inside the LDP, dismay is growing at Mr Abe’s push. Last week Setsu Kobayashi, a prominent scholar and advocate of changing article nine, joined a newly formed group of constitutional experts to defend article 96. On May 23rd the LDP quietly dropped changing article 96 from its upper-house election manifesto.

A blow to Mr Abe’s plans may have come when a fellow historical revisionist, Toru Hashimoto, mayor of Osaka and a leader of the Japan Restoration Party (JRP), attracted censure at home and abroad for claiming that the system of “comfort women”, or sex slaves organised for the Japanese army during the second world war, had been necessary. The LDP had been counting on the party, which supports constitutional revision, for its two-thirds majority after the election. But now forming that alliance could tarnish the LDP, and the JRP may anyway perform badly in July.

Other parties will in any case contest the LDP draft. Their agendas for amendment are so various as to ensure years of debate. New Komeito, for instance, wants to increase the power of the lower house of the Diet relative to the upper house. The JRP wants decentralisation of government. Meanwhile, the public might well balk at approving a new article 96. The real risk is that, even if constitutional revision gets nowhere in the end, it will in the meantime distract attention from the vital task of reviving Japan’s economy.