Abe looking to build consensus for change to pacifist Constitution

With Japan's upper house election just two weeks away, the country's media outlets are busy taking the public's pulse.

Polls by the Asahi Shimbun and Yomiuri Shimbun found that the ruling coalition of the Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito will have a strong showing in the race. They are expected to take a majority of the 121 seats up for grabs. Together with those opposition parties that support constitutional revision, the LDP, or to be more exact, Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, will remove what has historically been an insuperable obstacle for the change.

Rewriting Japan's Constitution requires the approval of two-thirds of the chambers of parliament, or Diet, followed by majority support in a public referendum. The LDP has mustered enough seats in the lower house to meet that threshold. Now the second appears to be within reach in the upper house.