Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's putsch involves bypassing constitutional procedures to revise the Constitution because he lacks sufficient support to win two-thirds approval in both houses of the Diet and a majority in a national referendum. Instead, Abe achieved by diktat what he could not gain democratically, asserting a Cabinet reinterpretation of Article 9 that allows for collective self-defense.

Is this what Deputy Prime Minister Taro Aso meant last summer when he suggested it was important to learn from the sly manner of the Nazis when they overturned the Weimar Constitution? Regardless, on July 1, 2014, with the stroke of a pen Japan's postwar pacifist order was overturned, marking a major shift in national defense policy.

Abe justified doing so by invoking the need to protect U.S. forces in the event of an attack, but not many Japanese are keen to do so. The Yomiuri Shimbun, for example, on July 2 and 3 asked if respondents supported shooting down a missile headed for U.S. territory (Guam and Hawaii) and only 37 percent agreed while 51 percent opposed doing so. It's worth noting that the Yomiuri has been an enthusiastic cheerleader for Abe's reinterpretation of Article 9 to allow for collective self-defense and frames questions to elicit favorable responses. Thus it is remarkable that the Yomiuri found only 36 percent support the reinterpretation and 51 percent opposed, similar to the results of a Kyodo survey on July 1 and 2 in which 54.4 percent opposed while 34.6 percent expressed support. In the Kyodo poll, 73.9 percent said they expect that the scope of collective self-defense will expand, apparently unconvinced by Abe's reassurances that it will not.