People attend a protest in entrance of the Japanese prime minister’s official residence in Tokyo, Japan, November 21, 2025. /Xinhua
Editor’s word: Xiang Haoyu, a particular commentator for CGTN, is a specifically appointed analysis fellow on the Department for Asia-Pacific Studies, China Institute of International Studies. The article displays the writer’s opinions and never essentially the views of CGTN.
“Japan is back,” Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi declared. However, it seems that the harmful model of outdated Japan has returned.
Recently, a 23-year-old active-duty officer within the Japan Ground Self-Defense Force scaled the wall of the Chinese Embassy in Tokyo and broke in, threatening to kill Chinese diplomats “in the name of God.” This egregious incident, unprecedented in post-war Japan, is much from a mere “isolated security issue,” because the Japanese authorities have tried to downplay it; quite, it symbolizes the intense rightward shift in Japan’s political panorama and the resurgence of militarist remnants.
The occasion has not solely severely broken China-Japan relations but additionally broken Japan’s self-proclaimed picture as a “peaceful nation.”
Flagrant violation of worldwide regulation
The intruder’s radical actions crossed all authorized boundaries, reflecting Japan’s failure to purge the poisonous stays of militarism and the extreme erosion of the Self-Defense Forces by far-right ideologies.
The Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations explicitly states that the premises of a diplomatic mission shall be inviolable, and host nations bear an absolute obligation to make sure their safety. Allowing active-duty armed personnel to interrupt right into a international diplomatic mission is a flagrant violation of worldwide regulation and a crude transgression in opposition to one other nation’s sovereignty and diplomatic dignity. The officer’s actions – scaling the wall, concealing a knife and issuing demise threats – had been clearly a premeditated act of violent provocation and never impulsive.
This incident echoes the pre-World War II (WWII) Japanese army custom of “gekokujo” – insubordination. In the Thirties, junior officers acted within the title of “patriotism” and “revering the Emperor” to bypass civilian management and army self-discipline, orchestrating violent occasions.
Japan’s Kwantung Army unilaterally provoked the “September 18 Incident” in northeast China, destroying a bit of railway monitor and blaming China as a pretext for invasion. The act triggered a full-scale battle of aggression. That an active-duty officer focused a international embassy raises fears that this harmful custom is being revived throughout the Self-Defense Forces.
The incident is the bitter fruit of the long-term right-wing radicalization of Japanese forces. The Officer Candidate School, the place the marauding officer was skilled, and the National Defense Academy have lengthy develop into breeding grounds for historic revisionism.
According to Japanese media experiences, the 2024 curriculum on the Officer Candidate School blatantly glorifies the 1945 Battle of Okinawa between Japan and the United States, whereas remaining silent on the atrocities dedicated by the Japanese army, such because the killing and compelled suicides of civilians.
Mandatory programs on the National Defense Academy brazenly use militaristic phrases just like the “China Incident” and the “Great East Asia War,” distorting Japan’s battle of aggression as a “defensive war against Western colonizers.” The college additionally often invitations far-right students to present lectures, and college students keep an annual custom of marching 70 kilometers to worship on the controversial Yasukuni Shrine that commemorates Japanese battle criminals. Under the affect of such ideologies, the radicalization of the youthful era of officers was inevitable.
A view of the National Diet Building in Tokyo, Japan, January 19, 2026. /Xinhua
Japanese authorities’s perfunctory response
Following the incident, the response from the Japanese authorities and Self-Defense Forces management has remained confined to expressions of “deep regret,” with no formal apology issued to China up to now. Japanese police have charged the intruder solely with “illegal entry into a building,” ignoring the extreme nature of his armed demise threats – a transfer that primarily condones excessive violence.
Mainstream Japanese media too has intentionally downplayed the incident, projecting the officer’s testimony that he solely “wanted to speak with the Chinese ambassador.” This exposes the long-standing anti-China bias and tolerance for far-right sentiment in Japanese media circles.
The authorities’s perfunctory response is a mirrored image of its personal political rightward shift. Since taking workplace, the Takaichi administration has charged forward on a path of radicalization, hyping the fallacy that “a contingency in Taiwan is a contingency for Japan,” whereas accelerating army enlargement and in search of to dismantle the post-war peace system.
The appointment of former Self-Defense Forces personnel as prime ministerial aides has damaged the post-war custom of maintaining army figures out of the core decision-making circle.
Against this backdrop, the Japanese authorities has neither the desire nor the braveness to replicate on the militaristic roots of this incident, as its personal agenda aligns carefully with the calls for of far-right forces; investigating the incident totally would expose its personal flaws.
The authorities’s failure to behave has sparked robust dissatisfaction and skepticism among the many Japanese public. Social media has uncovered far-right students lecturing on the National Defense Academy and the glorification of imperial historical past. Some students warn that the federal government’s leniency towards the embassy intrusion will additional embolden far-right forces, doubtlessly resulting in extra excessive and violent habits in Japanese society.
On March 28, over a thousand folks gathered in Shinjuku, Tokyo, to protest, demanding that Takaichi apologize to China. Even earlier than this, Japanese residents had been gathering every day exterior the prime minister’s official residence to protest the Takaichi authorities’s militaristic insurance policies that squeeze civilian livelihoods and its inflammatory rhetoric relating to China’s Taiwan area, which will increase the danger of battle.
Vigilance in opposition to neo-militarism
The embassy intrusion serves as yet one more footnote to the collapse of Japan’s post-war picture as a “peaceful nation.” With the rightward shift in politics and re-militarization, the constraints of Article 9 of the Constitution have been hollowed out. Beneath the veneer of peace lies rampant historic revisionism, a international coverage hostile to neighbors and unprecedented army enlargement.
Neo-militarism will not be a easy repeat of the WWII-era militarism, however a mutation of these poisonous remnants spanning politics, financial system, army, media and beliefs.
Under the guise of “national normalization,” Japan is repeatedly breaking via the post-war peace framework. Right-wing forces are selling notions of Japanese racial superiority and manufacturing a way of “existential crisis” to incite public anxiousness. The Self-Defense Forces have gotten a device for right-wing political agendas, reworking from a strictly regulated peaceable power right into a breeding floor for extremist concepts and an actor for violent provocations.
If Japan needs to revive its worldwide picture and restore relations with its neighbors, it should interact in deep reflection, purge extremist ideologies throughout the Self-Defense Forces, and cease manufacturing perceived threats from neighboring nations. If the federal government continues to permit far-right ideologies to develop, it won’t solely destroy over 70 years of peaceable growth however might as soon as once more convey catastrophe to the area.
The worldwide neighborhood have to be vigilant and curb the event of Japan’s neo-militarism to safeguard the post-war worldwide order. The way forward for China-Japan relations will depend on whether or not Japan can really honor its peace commitments and cease actions that hurt China’s core pursuits. Only by making a clear break from its militaristic previous can Japan rebuild belief with China and obtain true peace and stability within the area.
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Source: CGTN
