Photo/Illutration The Cabinet Legislation Bureau’s reply stating no document exists over whether the bureau examined the constitutionality of the government’s plan to allow the Self-Defense Forces to strike military bases in enemy territory. (Naotaka Fujita)

The Cabinet Legislation Bureau confirmed it has not produced a document on whether Prime Minister Fumio Kishida’s proposal to give Japan first-strike capabilities against enemy bases is compatible with the pacifist Constitution.

The bureau is called the “guardian of the Constitution” because of its role of assisting the Cabinet on legislative matters, including whether proposed bills are consistent with the Constitution.

In response to an information disclosure request from The Asahi Shimbun, the bureau said no document “has been produced or obtained by the bureau” over the proposal to allow the Self-Defense Forces to strike enemy bases that are planning attacks against Japan.

Kishida is now expected to explain in the Diet why he is pushing the idea and whether the move would fall within Japan’s legal boundaries.

Critics have blasted the proposal, saying it would essentially give Japan pre-emptive strike capabilities that would be a clear deviation from the country’s postwar policy of taking an exclusively defensive posture.

This policy allows the SDF to possess and use weapons to the minimum extent necessary to defend the nation. The policy was adopted to align with the pacifist principles of the Constitution.

But Kishida announced late last year that Japan should consider acquiring the ability to strike enemy bases that are planning to attack Japan.

Preceding governments have eschewed such attacks as a violation of the exclusively defensive policy.

The Asahi Shimbun asked both the Cabinet Legislation Bureau and the Defense Ministry in January whether Kishida’s proposal was compatible with the policy.

It also asked the bureau and the ministry to disclose records that document how they reached their respective stances on the issue.

The bureau’s response came in February.

The ministry, in its reply in April, said the proposal is “generally compatible” with the exclusively defensive policy.

The ministry added nothing new to documents compiled in December with the National Security Secretariat for use in Diet debate.

The government’s interpretation of what constitutes “exclusively defensive defense” has loosened in recent years.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s government reinterpreted the Constitution in 2014 to approve of Japan’s exercising the right to collective self-defense for SDF deployments in defense of other nations.

Japan’s previous security policy had banned the exercise of collective self-defense in light of the Constitution. But Abe’s government insisted that the shift was within the range of the exclusively defensive policy.

Another example of a loosened definition concerns long-range missiles that the government decided in 2018 to introduce.

Those missiles have capabilities close to intercontinental ballistic missiles, which are listed as weapons that Japan cannot possess because they go beyond the exclusive defense capabilities.

In addition, the “ability to strike enemy bases” has not been clearly defined.

In April, Kishida’s Liberal Democratic Party suggested that possible enemy targets should be expanded to include “command and control functions.”

Abe had said such attacks “should not be limited to enemy bases and include command centers.”

The Defense Ministry, not the Cabinet Legislation Bureau, has been primarily tasked to determine whether weapons under consideration for Japan’s possession fall within the defense policy since the SDF was established in 1954.

The replies from the bureau and ministry suggest that the Kishida Cabinet will stick to this pattern in pushing ahead with the proposal for what critics regard as a breach of the defense policy.

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