People go to the Memorial Hall of the Victims in Nanjing Massacre by Japanese Invaders in Nanjing, east China’s Jiangsu Province, August 15, 2026. /VCG
August 15 marked the anniversary of Japan’s unconditional give up in World War II. Yet on the identical day, Japanese politicians’ strikes involving the infamous Yasukuni Shrine drew sturdy opposition from Asian neighbors and students in Japan.
China’s Foreign Ministry stated the Yasukuni Shrine is a religious device and image of Japanese militarism, and in reality, a shrine for warfare criminals, because it honors 14 convicted Class-A warfare criminals liable for Japan’s warfare of aggression. China firmly opposes Japan’s actions involving the shrine, it stated.
South Korea’s authorities additionally lodged a powerful protest, criticizing the strikes as “acts of forgetting history and going against the tide of history.”
Japanese students criticized Japan’s downplaying of its wartime aggression and the nation’s rising push for remilitarization.
Japan dangers ‘repeating the errors of historical past’
Atsushi Koketsu, professor emeritus at Yamaguchi University, stated Japan mustn’t make any transfer to go to Yasukuni Shrine, whether or not instantly or not directly, together with making ritual choices.
Many Japanese teams and politicians nonetheless refuse to acknowledge historic details of aggression, together with the Nanjing Massacre, a 1937 atrocity through which greater than 300,000 Chinese civilians and disarmed troopers have been killed by Japanese troops, Koketsu stated, including that it’s regrettable that even 80 years after the Tokyo Trials, many Japanese individuals have nonetheless not realized the teachings of historical past.
Atsushi Koketsu, professor emeritus at Yamaguchi University. /CMG
Aisa Kiyosue, a constitutional scholar and professor at Japan’s Muroran Institute of Technology, stated Japan ought to resist the struggling its wars of aggression precipitated to the peoples in Asia, significantly the Chinese individuals, and warned that Japanese society faces the chance of a brand new type of militarism taking root.
“If Japan avoids its wartime crimes, or even glorifies or downplays its history of aggression through related actions, it will not only fail to win the trust of the international community, but could also risk repeating the mistakes of history,” Kiyosue stated.
‘A brand new wartime system is step by step being constructed’
Experts condemned Japanese politicians’ rising pattern towards remilitarization, warning that strikes to broaden Japan’s navy capabilities may undermine postwar peace and lift issues a couple of return to militarism.
Kiyosue warned that Japan’s easing of restrictions on arms exports, along with the institution of a nationwide intelligence company, had elevated the chance of the nation repeating the trail to militarism.
Removing restrictions on the export of weapons with deadly and harmful capabilities quantities to a coverage of earning money by warfare, she stated, including that “with xenophobia also on the rise in Japan, a new wartime system is gradually being built.”
Meanwhile, Koketsu described current strikes by the Takaichi authorities to rethink Japan’s Three Non-Nuclear Principles as a harmful sign, stressing that Japan should uphold the ideas.
The so-called Defense White Paper launched on August 4 already indicated an environment of reconsidering the Three Non-Nuclear Principles, Koketsu stated, whereas debate had additionally emerged in Japan over whether or not the nation may possess nuclear-powered submarines.
“Japan is gradually moving toward possessing nuclear weapons. This must never happen,” he stated. “We should make ‘not increasing the number of nuclear-armed states’ a national policy of Japan and strictly adhere to the Three Non-Nuclear Principles.”
Source: CGTN