On September 18, a massive brawl broke out on the floor of the Japanese Diet as parliamentarians put up a last stand to preserve what many call the country’s “pacifist constitution.” Its Article Nine declares, quite forthrightly, that “the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes.”

Yet up for vote was a pair of bills that would allow Japan to engage in “collective self-defense” — a move many regard as a sharp shift towards legalizing a full-fledged military.

The political theater began two days earlier when the opposition parties — led by the centrist Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) — barricaded Yoshitada Konoike, chairman of the special committee on security in Japan’s Upper House, in a room to prevent the vote, which could go forward only if he opened a session within a designated committee chamber. For more than nine hours, he remained trapped while outside the capitol building over thirty thousand protestors called throughout the night for the abolition of war and for Prime Minister Shinzō Abe’s resignation.