But Article 9 goes even further. The second clause pledges that “land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained” by Japan, and that “the right of belligerency will not be recognized.” As the name of Japan’s military suggests, the Japanese Self-Defense Forces exist only to protect the Japanese homeland. JSDF forces participate in UN peacekeeping operations and humanitarian missions, but avoided UN-authorized combat missions in Korea or during the Gulf War. (A noncombat unit took part in the U.S. occupation of Iraq after Saddam Hussein’s fall, to considerable controversy.)

The bill passed on Friday does not change Article 9’s language. That would require a constitutional amendment and two-thirds support in both houses of the Diet, which Abe and the ruling Liberal Democratic Party lack. Instead, it reinterprets it to allow for “collective self-defense.”

Japanese forces will now be able to assist the U.S. and other allies if those allies were attacked, although there would still be limits on the scope and scale of Japanese assistance. The BBC notes, for example, that Japan could now shoot down a North Korean missile fired at the U.S. and provide logistical support to South Korea if Pyongyang invaded, but could not deploy Japanese troops to Korea.

The reorientation of Japanese foreign policy is a major triumph for Abe, a conservative nationalist who has long sought a more assertive posture on the international stage. But his long awaited shift did not come without criticism. Tens of thousands of students protested the bill in Tokyo, and opposition leader Tatsuya Okada warned that the bill and other security-related measures would “leave a big scar on Japanese democratic politics.”

As my colleague David Graham noted when Abe visited the United States in April, U.S. resistance to reinterpreting Article 9 has faded as World War II recedes into history. But in China, a major regional rival of Japan where memories of World War II-era war crimes still loom large in the popular imagination, the response to Abe’s victory was much less enthusiastic.

“We demand that Japan genuinely listen to just appeals from both at home and abroad, learning from historical lessons and adhering to the path of peaceful development,” a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said Friday, according to The Washington Post.

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