RARELY has such an unpopular leader won a free and fair election so lopsidedly. Only about one-third of Japanese people approve of Shinzo Abe, their prime minister; a whopping 51% disapprove. Yet on October 22nd his Liberal Democratic Party and its coalition partner kept its two-thirds majority in the lower house (see article). Mr Abe’s decision to call a snap election, unlike that of Theresa May, his British counterpart, paid off handsomely.

One reason is that the opposition imploded. A much-hyped new force, the Party of Hope, led by Tokyo’s charismatic governor, botched its campaign and ended up with barely enough seats to fill a ramen restaurant. A left-wing splinter group, the Constitutional Democratic Party, emerged as the main opposition force with only 55 out of 465 seats. Mr Abe is lucky in his choice of challengers.

Playing it safe

But the other reason for his triumph is that nervous voters sought reassurance. As Mr Abe pointed out before the election, Japan faces two crises: an ageing population and a hostile neighbour, North Korea, that is lobbing missiles in Japan’s direction and rushing to fit nuclear warheads to them. Both crises are grave and pressing, but the first is chronic—slowing or reversing Japan’s demographic decline will take decades—and the second acute. Many voters decided that, even if they did not warm to him personally, Mr Abe was more likely than any of the alternatives to keep them safe. President Donald Trump probably helped him, too, by giving Japanese voters the impression (strongly denied) that America cannot always be relied upon to defend Japan.

Mr Abe has taken his win as a mandate to press ahead with his long-standing plan to revise Japan’s pacifist constitution. This is a sensible goal. As it stands, the document is impossible to take literally. Imposed on Japan by the victorious Americans after the second world war, it says, in Article 9, that “the Japanese people forever renounce...the threat or use of force as a means of settling international disputes.” For this reason, “land, sea and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained.”

For more than seven decades Japan has flagrantly violated its own constitution by maintaining land, sea and air forces. Its military budget is the eighth-largest in the world. Its 300,000 troops are superbly equipped. Successive governments have clung to the fiction that this is somehow constitutional by using the label of “self-defence forces”. As legal camouflage goes, this is like trying to hide a tank by sticking a Post-it note on it.

Mr Abe is right to want to make clear in the constitution that Japan may, in fact, maintain armed forces. The rule of law matters, and is undermined when the government nakedly disobeys its principles. What is more, decades of double-talk over Article 9 have muddled the debate that Japan ought to be having over what role it should play in maintaining regional and global security.

Every time a Japanese government tries to do more to help its allies, or to contribute more to UN peacekeeping operations, pacifists cry “unconstitutional”. Most of the time they are right, and even if they are overruled, they usually delay things. Until last year Japan’s military forces were barred from helping allies who came under attack in its backyard. Japan’s UN peacekeeping forays are a joke. Its troops in Iraq had to be protected by Australian forces, because they were not allowed to shoot back at militants who attacked their base. This year Japanese UN peacekeepers pulled out of South Sudan after it was revealed that the war-ravaged African country was, yes, a bit dangerous. In July Mr Abe’s defence minister had to resign for allegedly covering up this well-known fact.

Changing Article 9 will not be easy. First, Mr Abe must come up with wording that can gain a two-thirds majority in both houses of the Diet, which means winning over several of his more doveish colleagues. The revision must then win a simple majority in a referendum, which may be a struggle.

China and North and South Korea will protest loudly if Japan revises Article 9, claiming that this is a step back towards the Japanese militarism that devastated East Asia in the 1930s and 1940s. This is bunk. Like any state, Japan has a right to defend itself. As a rich, mature democracy, it should also be doing its bit to keep the world safer. With its elderly, shrinking population and ingrained pacifism, Japan is no threat to anyone.

Alas, Mr Abe himself often creates the opposite impression. If he wants constitutional change and to reduce opposition abroad, he should stop visiting the Yasukuni shrine, where war criminals are worshipped; denounce the atrocities of the past; and distance himself from his grandfather, a post-war prime minister and colonial administrator who forced thousands of Chinese to work as slaves. For Japan truly to become a normal power, it needs to come to terms with its history.