Japan’s failure to completely confront its wartime crimes has fueled historic denial, empowered right-wing revisionism, and enabled a harmful resurgence of militarism
by Wen Wu
AN INCOMPLETE RECKONING
The failure to completely reckon with Japan’s wartime crimes after World War II (WWII) has left militarism dormant, solely to erupt some day sooner or later if going unchecked.
Although Emperor Hirohito’s “Imperial Rescript on the Termination of the War,” issued on Aug. 15, 1945, successfully acknowledged Japan’s navy defeat, it intentionally averted phrases resembling “surrender” and “defeat,” opting as a substitute for the phrase “termination of the war.” The doc glorified Japan’s aggression as a noble endeavor “to ensure the Empire’s self-preservation and the stability of East Asia” and “for the liberation of Asia.” While expressing “regret” towards its former allies and lamenting the fallen Japanese troopers with “grief that rends the heart,” it supplied no apology in any respect to the individuals of Asia who suffered immensely through the battle. It condemned the atomic bombings as “taking the toll of many innocent lives,” but conveniently ignored Japan’s prior acts of aggression.
Even extra tellingly, when Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki’s cupboard resigned shortly after the give up announcement, its acknowledged motive was not Japan’s defeat, however somewhat that it had “troubled His Majesty twice to issue sacred judgments” relating to ending the battle. Japan did not conduct a complete reckoning not solely with those that initiated the battle, but in addition with the militarist ideology and tradition and institutional buildings that enabled it.
Shortly after WWII, with the descent of the Iron Curtain, Japan was swiftly built-in into the Western bloc and rearmed earlier than it might full its demilitarization and de-fascistization. In an effort to take away wartime right-wing components from its postwar political ecosystem, Japan initially carried out a self-discipline marketing campaign concentrating on battle criminals, former navy officers, leaders of right-wing forces, and executives of enterprises and establishments linked to the wartime regime. However, by the tip of 1951, of the 210,000 people subjected to this marketing campaign, over 200,000 had been exempted from penalties or reinstated. As a outcome, postwar Japan inherited a lot of its prewar political construction. Numerous unrepentant militarists evaded accountability for his or her battle crimes, and returned to positions of affect in politics, the navy, and enterprise.
Nowhere is that this lack of thorough reckoning extra evident than within the case of Nobusuke Kishi, a suspected Class-A battle legal.
Kishi served in Japan’s puppet state in China’s northeast from 1936. He held key positions resembling vice minister of trade and deputy chief cupboard secretary and managed the area’s economic system on behalf of the imperial aggressors. In October 1942, he grew to become minister of commerce and trade in Class-A battle legal Hideki Tojo’s cupboard, and later served as state minister and vice minister of munitions. He was elected to the Diet in 1942 with help from the fascist “Imperial Rule Assistance Association.” In September 1945, Kishi was arrested as a Class-A battle crimes suspect for the crimes he dedicated and was imprisoned for 3 years at Sugamo Prison. He narrowly escaped prosecution attributable to his earlier disagreements with Tojo over the Battle of Saipan. He was launched by U.S. occupation authorities in December 1948, however remained a goal of the self-discipline marketing campaign. After the marketing campaign ended as a result of outbreak of the Cold War and coverage shifts in Washington, Kishi reentered politics and ultimately grew to become prime minister in 1957.
After coming to energy, Kishi put ahead a sequence of insurance policies that ran counter to the development of historical past, shortly turning Japan’s political ambiance towards the suitable. On Aug. 7, 1987, Kishi handed away. In their obituaries, Japanese media recapped the three durations of his life: first as a battle legal steeped in militarist ideology, then because the determine uniting Japan’s conservative forces after the battle, and at last because the architect of the revised U.S.-Japan Security Treaty and probably the most ardent advocate of the U.S.-Japan alliance.
HISTORICAL DENIAL GAINS GROUND
From the Sixties by the Eighties, Japan skilled fast financial progress and solidified its standing as an financial powerhouse, and with this got here a rising need amongst its management to interrupt free from the constraints of the postwar order. This fueled a societal development of in search of “success factors” in Japan’s imperial previous, resulting in an indiscriminate glorification of conventional tradition and historical past. Such sentiments step by step morphed right into a harmful revisionism that challenged the legitimacy of the postwar worldwide order and denied Japan’s colonial and militarist crimes.
By the mid-Eighties, the Japanese authorities started calling for a “final settlement of postwar politics.” Right-wing teams such because the Shinto Political League, Association to Protect Japan, National Conference to Protect Japan, and Alliance of Local Assembly Members of Nippon Kaigi emerged, selling the rejection of what they derided as a “masochistic view of history” and pushing for official visits to the Yasukuni Shrine the place convicted Class-A battle criminals are enshrined.
At the start of the twenty first century, conservative forces redoubled efforts to reshape the nationwide notion of historical past and break away from the postwar system underneath the slogan of reworking Japan right into a “normal country.” Between 2001 and 2006, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visited the Yasukuni Shrine six instances. When Shinzo Abe first grew to become prime minister in 2006, he pushed for reinterpretations of the structure and lifting the ban on collective self-defense, and elevated the Defense Agency to full ministry standing. After his second time period began in 2012, Abe himself visited the Yasukuni Shrine, and revised the decades-old Three Principles on Arms Exports to permit the exports of weapons and know-how. He compelled laws by the Diet allowing the train of collective self-defense underneath so-called “survival-threatening situations,” a elementary breach of Japan’s long-standing “exclusively defense-oriented policy.”
In August 2015, proper earlier than the seventieth anniversary of Japan’s give up, Abe delivered the so-called “Abe Statement,” unilaterally declaring an finish to Japan’s “endless apologies” to China, the Republic of Korea, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and different sufferer nations. This was a transparent try and downplay, if not outright evade, Japan’s battle crimes by making a clear break from its previous. After leaving workplace, he went even additional to overtly declare that “a Taiwan contingency is a contingency for Japan.”
It is price noting that Abe was Nobusuke Kishi’s grandson. Observers extensively agree that Abe inherited his grandfather’s political DNA — a truth Abe himself acknowledged repeatedly. He acknowledged explicitly in his memoir, “My political DNA comes primarily from Nobusuke Kishi.”
Since then, successive Japanese leaders have both visited the Yasukuni Shrine instantly or despatched choices and ritual sakaki branches to this image of Japan’s battle historical past. They have persistently highlighted Japan’s identification as a “victim” of the atomic bombings whereas understating its function as an aggressor to win worldwide sympathy. Meanwhile, protection spending continues to rise yr by yr, fueling a fast navy buildup, and right-wing teams have been revising faculty textbooks to negate and even glorify wartime atrocities. These actions replicate a disturbing sample: Japan’s management sees its wartime tasks with indifference or lively evasion, thus offering fertile floor for the resurgence of militarism.
MILITARISM BECOMES A PRESENT-DAY THREAT
In October 2025, Sanae Takaichi grew to become Japan’s prime minister. With a detailed connection to Shinzo Abe, Takaichi attracts her core help from the Abe faction, also referred to as the Seiwa Policy Research Council, the most important and most influential group inside Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Known for its sturdy nationalist and conservative agenda, its push for constitutional revision and hard-line stance towards China, this faction has lengthy sought to rework Japan right into a “normal” navy energy.
In the Abe authorities, Takaichi held key posts together with minister in control of administrative reform, LDP coverage chief, and minister of inner affairs. She sees herself because the trustworthy inheritor to Abe’s legacy, a notion bolstered when she was photographed early this yr holding the late prime minister’s portrait throughout a go to to Ise Grand Shrine. Yet in comparison with Abe, Takaichi has confirmed much more aggressive and reckless in pursuing Japan’s “normalization” and even militarization.
Politically, Takaichi has overtly defied worldwide legislation and challenged the post-WWII order. On Nov. 7, 2025, throughout a Diet session, she overtly linked a “Taiwan contingency” to Japan’s “survival-threatening crisis,” hinting at a navy intervention within the Taiwan Strait. This marked the primary time since 1945 {that a} sitting Japanese chief had issued an overt risk of pressure towards a WWII Allied victor.
Takaichi has additionally declared revising Article 9 of Japan’s Peace Constitution, a provision renouncing battle and the upkeep of armed forces, as a central purpose of her authorities. She goals not solely to delete the clause but in addition to insert an “emergency powers” provision, paving the best way for turning the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) into a proper navy group.
Militarily, her authorities justifies Japan’s remilitarization within the title of “responding to threats.” By relentlessly amplifying narratives of “China threat,” “DPRK missile risks,” “migrant invasions” and an “encirclement” of Japan, her authorities has dramatically accelerated rearmament. In 2025, Japan raised its protection price range to 2 p.c of GDP forward of schedule, and the 2026 protection price range units a brand new file and marks the 14th consecutive annual improve.
The Takaichi cupboard can also be making ready to revise the three safety paperwork to loosen arms export restrictions, doubtlessly enabling large-scale exports of deadly weapons. Senior officers within the Prime Minister’s Office have even advised that Japan ought to purchase nuclear weapons, whereas Takaichi herself alluded to the potential for introducing nuclear-powered submarines, which might be an unprecedented leap in Japan’s navy posture.
Ideologically, Takaichi clings to a distorted view of WWII historical past. In the lead-up to and through the battle, Japanese militarists used the Imperial Rescript on Education to indoctrinate residents, instilling the assumption that they need to “rush to the battlefield and willingly sacrifice their lives for the Emperor.” Takaichi learn this doc completely from childhood and as soon as publicly praised it as “extremely inspiring.”
After becoming a member of Abe’s cupboard in 2006, she has made many visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, repeatedly denied in public the Nanjing Massacre and the compelled recruitment of consolation girls, and aggressively advocated constitutional revision to rename the JSDF because the “National Defense Army” and grant Japan the suitable to declare battle. Alarmingly, Takaichi was as soon as photographed standing beside the chief of a neo-Nazi group in entrance of the Japanese flag, and even wrote a preface for a guide glorifying Adolf Hitler.
It is evident that Takaichi’s reckless remarks on Taiwan are usually not remoted incidents however a part of a harmful sample. Within simply three months of her time period, Japan’s rightward strategic drift has sharply accelerated, and the nation has moved substantively towards remilitarization. The revival of militarism has turn out to be an actual and current hazard.
The classes of WWII stay recent in our reminiscence. Asian nations and the Japanese individuals themselves, who suffered tremendously through the battle, should stay vigilant towards the damaging strikes of the Takaichi authorities and Japan’s resurgent right-wing forces. We should stand united to forestall historical past from repeating previous tragedies, uphold the postwar worldwide order, and safeguard the hard-won peace and stability of our shared Asian dwelling.
Editor’s word: The writer is a commentator on worldwide affairs.
The views expressed on this article are these of the writer and don’t essentially replicate these of Xinhua News Agency.