On June 13, DPJ President Banri Kaieda issued the following statement.

Today, a joint proposal for revision of the Law on Procedures for Amendment of the Constitution (the so-called national referendum law) based on an agreement reached between eight ruling and opposition parties, including the DPJ, passed the Diet.

Seven years have passed since the passage of the national referendum law, and we would like to express our deep appreciation for the fact that the procedures for amending the Constitution have been consolidated, achieving a degree of resolution for issues that have remained outstanding since that time, namely, “reducing the legal voting age to 18 years of age”, “revising legal provisions relating to the political activities of public servants”, and “considering whether to expand the scope for national referendums”.
Furthermore, in order to encourage broad public participation in the debate regarding Constitutional amendment, the DPJ has continued to call for the voting age to be reduced to 18 years of age and for public servants to be permitted to engage in political activities as freely as possible. We understand our party’s position to have basically been adopted through these revisions.

For sixty-seven long years, our nation has been in a position where we have unable to implement a national referendum regarding Constitutional amendment for procedural reasons. Now that it has become possible, thanks to this revision, to propose Constitutional amendments, if Prime Minister Abe does indeed wish to have the right to exercise collective defence in general, then the proper way to go about this would be for him to submit a Constitutional amendment fairly and squarely. Despite this, the Abe Cabinet is trying to force through Cabinet approval permitting the exercise of collective self-defence by changing the interpretation of the Constitution. We absolutely cannot ignore such behaviour, which runs counter to the principles of both constitutionalism and the rule of law.