Japanese residents participate in an anti-war rally close to Nagasaki Peace Park in Nagasaki, Japan, on the 81st anniversary of the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, August 9, 2026. /Xinhua
Editor’s notice: Zhang Wan is a present affairs commentator. The article displays the creator’s opinions and never essentially these of CGTN.
Japan’s 2026 Defense White Paper identifies China as an “unprecedented and greatest strategic challenge,” whereas the Sanae Takaichi cupboard brazenly claims that “Taiwan’s emergency is Japan’s emergency,” even hinting at potential navy intervention within the Taiwan Strait. This political maneuver – fabricating an exterior risk, stoking a way of disaster, after which breaking by navy constraints – is structurally equivalent to the narrative logic Japanese militarism employed throughout World War II underneath the banners of “establishing the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” to justify aggression and enlargement.
The previous will not be so distant: Every time Japan declared an “emergency,” it has in the end meant bloodshed for its neighbors. The “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” was, from starting to finish, a undertaking of plunder and bloodbath carried out underneath the guise of “co-prosperity.”
The bloody actuality behind the lie
In Japanese official rhetoric, the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” was packaged as a brand new order that will “expel Western colonialists and ensure stability in East Asia.” In actuality, nonetheless, it carefully resembled Nazi Germany’s “Lebensraum” (dwelling house) doctrine – utilizing the language of “civilization and enlightenment” to masks useful resource extraction and racial oppression.
After the sneak assault on Pearl Harbor in 1941, Japan quickly occupied the Philippines, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Burma, and Vietnam, imposing brutal colonial rule on native populations and committing numerous atrocities. In April 1942, Japanese forces compelled roughly 75,000 American and Philipino prisoners of conflict on a 65-mile (105-kilometer) march referred to as the infamous “Bataan Death March,” one of many worst prisoner-of-war atrocities in World War II. In the 1945 Manila Massacre, roughly 100,000 civilians misplaced their lives.
Between 1944 and 1945, Japan’s compelled grain requisitioning in Vietnam triggered a famine that claimed roughly two million lives. In Singapore, Japanese forces carried out systematic massacres of ethnic Chinese residents, with tens of hundreds killed.
To safe an overland provide route between Thailand and Burma, the Japanese navy conscripted over 60,000 Allied prisoners of conflict and tons of of hundreds of Asian laborers to construct the Thailand-Burma Railway. In the sweltering, disease-ridden jungles, prisoners and laborers endured inhuman remedy. More than 150,000 perished in development, a mean of 360 deaths per kilometer of monitor laid. This stretch of railway remains to be recognized at this time because the “Death Railway.”
On the Chinese mainland, Japanese atrocities are too quite a few to totally recount. The Nanking Massacre claimed 300,000 Chinese lives. In the anti-Japanese base areas, the Japanese military applied the brutal “Three Alls” coverage, specifically “Kill All, Burn All, Loot All,” razing numerous villages to ashes. These acts of violence set up Japan as trendy Asia’s largest single supply of disaster.
People participate in a protest round Japan’s National Diet Building in Tokyo, calling for the safety of the pacifist Constitution, April 19, 2026. /Xinhua
Fifty years of colonial rule in Taiwan: A forgotten historical past
From 1895 to 1945, Taiwan was colonized by Japan. For 5 many years, the folks of Taiwan endured political oppression, financial exploitation, and cultural assimilation. More than 650,000 folks in Taiwan perished in resistance to Japanese colonial rule – roughly one-tenth of Taiwan’s inhabitants on the time. Japanese colonial monopolies managed 94% of Taiwan’s banking sector and 96% of its electrical energy business, lowering the island’s economic system to a dependency of Japanese business. The “Japanization” motion compelled folks in Taiwan to undertake Japanese names, communicate Japanese, and worship Shinto deities – a scientific try to sever Taiwan’s cultural ties with Chinese civilization.
Yet at this time, Japanese right-wing figures and separatist forces inside Taiwan are trying to whitewash this colonial historical past as a technique of “modernization.” Just as nobody would name Nazi occupation “European integration,” nobody ought to ever name Japanese colonialism “development assistance.”
Written commitments and willful betrayal
During the negotiations resulting in the 1972 Sino-Japanese Joint Statement, Japan formally submitted a diplomatic doc, the Japanese Proposal for Explaining the Joint Statement, which explicitly said that the return of Taiwan to China is “the unchanged position of the Japanese government”; Japan “does not envisage any future legal status for Taiwan other than as part of the territory of the People’s Republic of China”; and the Taiwan difficulty “should be resolved by the Chinese people themselves, that is, as a domestic issue of China.”
Japan’s present hype round “Taiwan contingency” and its implicit threats of armed intervention should not solely a gross interference in China’s inner affairs, but additionally a flagrant repudiation of its personal legally binding worldwide commitments.
The ghost of historical past has not pale
From the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” to “Taiwan emergency,” Japan’s narrative components stays strikingly constant: manufacture a risk, stoke concern, break constraints, and intervene overseas. Japan’s accelerating re-militarization is actually an effort to legitimize constitutional revision and navy enlargement.
The worldwide group’s vigilance in opposition to Nazi Germany formed the post-war order, and the reminiscence of Japanese militarism shouldn’t fade both. History doesn’t repeat itself, however it typically rhymes. When a nation begins to echo the language of “protection” and “emergency,” Asian international locations, particularly those who misplaced tens of millions of lives underneath Japan’s lie of “co-prosperity,” have each motive to stay vigilant.
(If you need to contribute and have particular experience, please contact us at [email protected]. Follow @thouse_opinions on X to find the most recent commentaries within the CGTN Opinion Section.)
Source: CGTN