A poll by Japan's Yomiuri Shimbun says 71 percent of Japanese want the country's constitution to "clarify the existence of the Self-Defense Force," with 56 percent saying the constitution should be modified to take the SDF into consideration. The poll also put the number of those who want the pacifist Article 9 of the constitution revised at 39 percent — the highest percent in five years. An additional 33 percent said Article 9 should remain as is, with the current "interpretations," while just 21 percent said Article 9 should be strictly enforced in letter and that its spirit should not be undermined through various interpretations. The survey was taken in mid-March, amid heightened political tensions with China. Beijing has been beating the drum of nationalism — decrying visits by Japanese officials to the Yasukuni Shrine and the publication of Japanese textbooks that counter Beijing's view of history — but Tokyo is stoking Chinese angst for its own reasons. Japanese prime minister-hopefuls are lobbing criticisms at their giant neighbor, seeking both to build their own reputations as strong supporters of Japan's sovereignty and to build internal support for eventual revisions to the constitution. Foreign Minister Taro Aso and Chief Cabinet Secretary Shinzo Abe, both front-runners to succeed Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi, have been most vocal, followed closely by Finance Minister Sadakazu Tanigaki — another prime ministerial contender. All three have panned Chinese President Hu Jintao's recent offer of a summit with Koizumi (on condition that Koizumi cease his annual visits to the Yasukuni Shrine). All three mouthed effectively the same criticism: "How do you solve a dispute without meeting?" But at the moment, this is exactly what the leadership in Tokyo wants: a very vocal dispute with China that paints Beijing as the unreasonable party and gives Koizumi's would-be successors an opportunity to show their resolve. Koizumi, who rose to power as an "unconventional" maverick bucking the stagnation of the old Japanese political system, from the start has used his charisma and seeming nonconformity to promote a very conservative and traditional Japanese position — that Japan needs to once again think of itself as a regional, if not global, power and move beyond the "shame" of its defeat in World War II. In essence, the view is that Japan should stop kowtowing to the rest of the world, stop living as a defeated state and start acting like the second-largest world economy that it is. This is not new thinking. It has been around for a long time, though it has often been suppressed. Tokyo Gov. Shintaro Ishihara's 1989 essay-cum-book "The Japan That Can Say No" was perhaps one of the most vocal representations of the new Japanese nationalism. However, it was published shortly before the Japanese economic malaise set in. That ultimately sent the text to the back of the bookshelves, but vaulted the author to the center of Japanese politics. Since that time, Japanese officials have slowly but steadily raised the bar for what constitutes acceptable dialogue, bringing up issues ranging from the seemingly innocuous participation by Japan in international peacekeeping operations to musings over possession of aircraft carriers or even nuclear weapons. (Interestingly, Japan already is building its first of two planned helicopter destroyers, which will be the largest ships in the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force and — semantics aside — will be little less than coastal or escort carriers.) These subtle shifts in rhetoric, coupled with the interchangeable threats of North Korea and China, are bearing fruit. Japan's populace is less and less shocked at hearing of the potential for the country to finally, and more formally, move away from its constitutional pacifism to become a much more "normal" nation. Given its deployments in Iraq, joint development of anti-missile systems, in-air refueling capabilities, new interoperability among the various branches of service and many other shifts in training and capabilities — all based on ever more liberal interpretations of the constitution — Japan already has progressed far beyond the spirit, if not the letter, of Article 9. And as the 60th anniversary of the constitution approaches later this year and Koizumi nears his last days in office, he and his dueling successors are setting the stage for a formalization of Japan's increasingly self-assertive role in East Asia and beyond.