Protesters rally across Japan against controversial security bills

Students, mothers and other protesters staged rallies at more than 200 locations across Japan on Sunday, calling for the scrapping of controversial security legislation that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe wants to enact to strengthen the role of Japanese forces abroad.

A major rally in front of the Diet building in central Tokyo attracted around 120,000 protesters, according to the organizers. Opposition party leaders such as Katsuya Okada, head of the Democratic Party of Japan, and Kazuo Shii, chairman of the Japanese Communist Party, also joined the event. The opposition leaders vowed to work together to urge Abe's government to give up on the bills, with DPJ head Okada saying, "The Abe administration must understand that ordinary citizens have a sense of crisis and are angry."