The way Shinzō Abe sees it, Japan has learned all the lessons of war. “Now is the time to make a start on carving out a new era beyond the ‘postwar’ era,” the prime minister said in January in his first policy speech before the Diet. “[We will] take on the challenge of building up our nation anew.” As Japan celebrates the seventieth anniversary of the country’s postwar constitution, part of that “new nation-building” means rescripting it; the first order of business is shedding a shameful past.

Since taking office for the second time in 2012, Abe has spearheaded a campaign to revise Japan’s constitution, which has long kept the country from having a full-fledged military. In July’s upper house election, Abe’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) secured the parliamentary supermajority needed to pave the way for a national referendum to amend Article 9, the constitution’s “peace clause.”

Abe, who could become Japan’s longest-running prime minister since World War II, has unleashed a slew of security bills to undermine the constitution and its supporters, while ramping up his call for constitutional reform to allow for offensive military capabilities — most recently, after North Korea launched four ballistic missiles toward Japan, a move seen as a retaliation against joint US–South Korean military exercises in the region.