People attend a protest in entrance of the Japanese prime minister’s official residence in Tokyo, Japan, November 21, 2025. /Xinhua
Editor’s observe: Stephen Brawer, a particular commentator for CGTN, is the chairman of the Belt and Road Institute in Sweden and a distinguished analysis fellow of the Guangdong Institute for International Strategies. The article displays the creator’s opinions and never essentially the views of CGTN.
China suffered underneath the brutality of Japanese militarism greater than some other nation on the planet. There had been over 35 million victims in China alone attributable to Japanese aggression throughout World War . In 1937, Japanese occupiers carried out the horrendous slaughter in Nanjing: the Nanjing Massacre of round 300,000 victims, together with girls, youngsters, and different civilians. The ruling Japanese administration has by no means apologized for its barbarism in Nanjing. Yet Japanese aggression and expansionism didn’t start in 1937. At the top of the nineteenth century, in 1895, Japanese forces seized the provinces of Shandong and Liaoning in China, and compelled the give up of Taiwan to Imperial Japan. Taiwan was to stay a brutalized colony of Japan till 1945.
Ironically, Japanese industrialization and technological improvement within the 1870s, underneath the Meiji Restoration, was achieved in partnership with American insurance policies. At that point, American international coverage was devoted to improvement, particularly in Asia, not like the current American international coverage of containment and dominance. However, as Japan achieved these wonderful technological and industrial developments, as an alternative of sharing these advantages with its neighbors in a spirit of concord for the widespread good of humanity, Japan turned these technological developments into an imperial battering ram directed outward in opposition to its weaker neighbors and so-called adversaries.
People attend a protest in entrance of the Japanese prime minister’s official residence in Tokyo, Japan, November 21, 2025. /Xinhua
This imperial vanity and built-in self-instilled superiority haven’t disappeared. Therefore, Japan’s present route of remilitarization is as soon as once more exhibiting its ugly head. Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi is becoming a member of the United States and a “Global NATO” for out-of-area deployments, a part of the AUKUS alliance among the many UK, the US, and Australia. This new navy alliance will embody Japan and the Philippines, and even an “independent Taiwan,” geared toward containing China.
On April 27, Takaichi convened a gathering at her residence of an knowledgeable panel with the intention to revise Japan’s not too long ago adopted nationwide safety ideas often known as the “Three Documents,” with the goal of “advancing the fundamental reinforcement of defense capabilities, a crucial measure on the trajectory of national destiny.” Takaichi’s plan to allow Japan to construct up superior warfighting capabilities, together with nuclear weapons, is a brand new chapter repeating the cultural matrix of self-imposed madness and uncontrolled satisfaction that has led Japan to defeat and tragedy beforehand. Takaichi was quoted as saying that Japan should safe fight capabilities and put together for protracted warfare.
The truth is that Article 9 of Japan’s Constitution, which got here into impact in 1947, states clearly:
Aspiring sincerely to a global peace based mostly on justice and order, the Japanese folks ceaselessly resign struggle as a sovereign proper of the nation and the risk or use of pressure as technique of settling worldwide disputes.
In order to perform the goal of the previous paragraph, land, sea and air forces, in addition to different struggle potential, won’t ever be maintained. The proper to belligerency of the state won’t be acknowledged.
If the Japanese folks stay passive within the face of this new militarism, it’s going to spell their very own doom. In reality, it’s completely in opposition to Japan’s actual sovereign safety pursuits for use as a pawn within the nice geopolitical recreation of the US, the UK, and Australia to comprise China by way of navy alliances. Japan has at all times been part of Asia. Rather than permit itself to be a chess piece for Western powers’ pursuits, it should negotiate a suitable settlement with China and its different neighbors. This might start by becoming a member of the Belt and Road Initiative and BRICS to advance a multipolar world order based mostly on the sovereign pursuits of all nations, enabling them to develop and prosper collectively in concord.
The problem, particularly for the younger folks of Japan, is to acknowledge the ability of humility. Japan wants a motion to demand an official public apology by the Japanese authorities for the crimes that Japan dedicated in opposition to the worldwide neighborhood. This could be a superb starting to assist free the Japanese folks from the hazard and corruption of its current political management.
A much-needed revelation of how Anglo-American intelligence businesses protected the Japanese struggle criminals on the finish of World War would even be a step in the proper route. This is a well known truth among the many Chinese and lots of members of the Asian neighborhood, but it’s a story that has by no means been instructed sufficiently to the Western public. This might assist the folks of Japan recuperate among the dignity that has been robbed from them. It might additionally open the potential of a brand new route in China-Japan relations.
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Source: CGTN