Having managed to pass his controversial national security legislation in a highly fractious Diet session that ended Sept. 27, can you blame Prime Minister Shinzo Abe for wanting to kick back and focus on other things? The many people who gathered outside the national legislature day after day to protest a law they feared would ensnare the country in foreign wars probably have other things to do as well.

The vast majority of constitutional scholars surveyed declared the legislation constitutionally suspect, but so what? They are just a bunch of academics, and with the Supreme Court having long ago decided not to get involved in the noisome business of interpreting the famous "no war" provisions of the charter's Article 9, the only constitutional bodies left to do so are the Diet and the Cabinet. The latter having submitted the legislation and the latter having also approved it, The Government Has Spoken, it seems.

Anyway, everyone may be tired of hearing "Constitution this" and "unconstitutional that." That might be why nobody seems to be paying much attention to the fact that the Cabinet is about do something blatantly unconstitutional. That is, not just "reinterpreting" a tricky provision like Article 9 in the absence of the judiciary stepping up to the job, but by actually ignoring a procedural requirement clearly mandated by the Constitution. Moreover, the reason given for being able to do so is "because we've done it before." As they say in Anthony Burgess' "A Clockwork Orange": Horrorshow.