Nearly 60 pct of Japanese oppose controversial security legislation: poll

The number of opponents against a security-related legislation package pushed by the Japanese government increased by 11.1 percentage points from a previous poll in May to 58.7 percent, a latest nationwide survey released Sunday showed.

The telephone survey that conducted by Japan's Kyodo News at the weekend also showed that 56.7 percent of the respondents said that the bills are "unconstitutional," while only about 29.2 percent said that the legislation is "constitutional."

The survey came after a television poll last week on constitutional scholars which said about 98 percent of the 149 experts said the bills violate Japan's war-renouncing constitution that bans the Self-Defense Forces (SDF) from exercising the right to collective self-defense.

Under the debating security legislation, the SDF could be dispatched to every corner in the world to engage armed conflicts even if Japan itself is not being attacked in the so-called collective defense.

On Saturday, about 15,000 female protesters and thousands of students demonstrated in Tokyo against the government's efforts to ram the bills in the current Diet session which would be extended to August due to public pressure over the legislation.

The poll, which interviewed 1,447 randomly selected households with eligible voters, with valid responses from 1,016 people, said the supporting rate for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's cabinet dropped 2.5 percentage points to 47.4 percent from the previous one. Enditem