TOKYO, May 3 (Xinhua) -- As Japan's postwar Constitution entered into its 60th year of enforcement on Thursday, a highlighted issue under public debate is whether the top law, which has remained unchanged, should be amended and how.

    Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has made it very clear that revision of Constitution is high on the agenda of his administration. "We face the need to review the Constitution," Abe reiterated his determination in a statement issued on Thursday, the Constitution Day.

    "Japanese society has faced major changes that could not be imagined at the time of the enactment of the Constitution," Abe said.

    The premier said the nation's administrative system, relations between central and local governments, diplomacy and national security policies and other issues faced major changes and could no longer accommodate the economic development and globalization when the Constitution was written 60 years ago.

    Abe has also indicated before that constitution amendment is tobe a focal issue of the upper house election slated for July.

    The ruling Liberal Democratic Party said in a statement on Thursday that creating a new Constitution is along the spirits of building a new country and opening a new era. It called for extensive and deep discussion over drafting a new Constitution.

    Several recent polls conducted by local media showed that around half of Japanese think it necessary to revise the basic law,many citing reasons that the current constitutional provisions cannot satisfy the needs of present-day Japan.

    However, a majority of respondents expressed their concerns over any changes to the war-renouncing Article 9 which says, "The Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes."

    In a survey by the Asahi Shimbun newspaper released on Wednesday, 78 percent of respondents said that the Constitution, specifically Article 9, has helped to maintain peace in Japan.

    Some oppose any revisions at all and calls for honoring the pacifist top law. "It is of great importance to recognize how muchthe Constitution has contributed to bringing peace and prosperity to postwar Japan, and to consider how the country can contribute to enhancing world peace on the basis of the Constitution's no-war principle," the English-language Japan Times newspaper said in an editorial on Thursday.

    "People should not be swayed by a propaganda-like argument thatthe Constitution is out of date," it said.

    Sharing similar concerns, some opposition lawmakers and scholars held a rally Thursday and called for sticking to the basic law.

    Social Democratic Party leader Mizuho Fukushima told some 6,000attendants in Tokyo that "it is a great achievement of postwar Japan that we have killed nobody in a war and none of us have beenkilled" under the war-renouncing Article 9 of the Constitution.

    Japanese Communist Party leader Kazuo Shii warned at the gathering that the premier "wants to change this country so it will be allowed to join in a war and fire weapons, rather than just sending troops."

    Amid the oppositions, steps to put the amendment issue on table are busily carried out. Last month, the lower house of the parliament passed a bill that sets rules for a national referendumon constitutional amendment. The bill, supported by the ruling coalition, is now under debate in the upper house. It is believed that it is set to pass during the current parliamentary session, creating the necessary legal environment of the amendment.