MAMMOTH demonstrations of an estimated 120,000 people rallied outside Japan’s parliament yesterday hoping to defeat what they call the “voluntary war law.”

Protesters chanted: “No to war legislation!” “Scrap the Bill now” and [Prime Minister Shinzo] “Abe, quit!” in the starkest illustration yet of public hostility to changing the country’s unique peace constitution.

A Bill which violates the constitutional clause saying the military can only be deployed in self-defence has already passed the lower house of parliament and is being debated in the upper house.

Mr Abe argues that Japan needs more military flexibility in order to counter the rise of China, but opposition parties — backed by a majority of the population in opinion polls — want to retain the commitment to peace adopted after defeat in WWII.

Survivors of the atomic bombs dropped by the US on Japan at the end of the war recently added their voices to the opposition, denouncing the drift towards militarism at a commemoration of the 70th anniversary of the Nagasaki bombing earlier this month.

Critics say the new course is being pushed by the United States, which wants to be able to rely on Japanese assistance if any conflict breaks out in the Far East. Japan is already home to tens of thousands of US troops.

Democratic Party leader Katsuya Okada said the government was seeking to ramp up a false sense of crisis to pass its new law, while Communist Party chairman Kazuo Shii accused the PM of avoiding difficult questions about the Bill.

“Japan is standing at a historical crossroads between war and peace,” Mr Shii said before the rally.

“The war-renouncing Article 9 of the constitution is a treasure embraced by the Japanese people, which they wholly endorse based on reflections on past wars. The Japanese Communist Party calls on all peace-loving people to unite to protect Article 9.”