Japan descending into abyss of neo-militarism

This year marks the 89th anniversary of the July 7 Incident, also known as the Marco Polo Bridge Incident, which was the starting point of Japan's full-scale invasion of China. Eighty years ago, the Tokyo Trials set new precedents by judging war crimes under the new legal norms of "crimes against peace" and "crimes against humanity". The Tokyo Trials were groundbreaking because they delivered justice to the victims of Japan's aggression and contributed to the realization of world peace.

Japan was supposed to learn from these trials and transform itself from a military state to a peaceful nation under a pacifist Constitution. However, there has been no sincere reflection on the mistakes of the past, and Tokyo didn't seriously draw lessons from the trials. This is the fundamental reason for the country's rightward political shifts and remilitarization.

The politics of postwar Japan were heavily influenced by the country's prewar imperial system. Emperor Hirohito, who reigned from 1926 to 1989, was a key figure and the highest authority who started the war of aggression. He not only escaped prosecution in the Tokyo Trials, but many Japanese regarded him as someone who ended the conflict. Britain, the Netherlands, China and others had argued for his prosecution and demanded that he abdicate because the imperial system was the foundation of Japan's militaristic ideology.

However, the United States retained the imperial system to smooth the postwar occupation of Japan. Washington wanted to gain the support of the Japanese people by not punishing their emperor.

Instead, it embedded the renunciation of war in the country's Constitution and abolished the military.

Two issues need to be highlighted here. First, under the new Constitution and amid Cold War tensions, Japan was allowed to rearm under US guidance. The transformation of the National Police Reserve to the National Safety Force, and finally the establishment of the Self-Defense Forces in 1954, marked a significant shift.

The SDF, coordinating with the 53,000 US troops stationed in Japan, totals nearly 250,000 personnel and has now grown into a force with offensive capabilities. Joint US-Japan military exercises are actively conducted and reinforce war readiness. Article 9 of the pacifist Constitution, which renounces war, has been rendered toothless.

Additionally, with the removal of restrictions on arms exports, Japan is attempting to forge quasi-military alliances with countries such as the Philippines through exporting weapons. The shift from peace diplomacy to military diplomacy is becoming evident. The establishment of a de facto US-Japan integrated operations structure bypassed parliamentary debate, transforming the SDF into a force ready for "wartime conditions".

Second, prewar power dynamics — the power of an imperial system — continued in Japan even after World War II, exemplified by figures such as Nobusuke Kishi, a bureaucrat who ran the "puppet Manchukuo" alongside then-prime minister Hideki Tojo. Tojo was sentenced to death in the Tokyo Trials and executed, while Kishi, also a Class-A criminal and maternal grandfather of former prime minister Shinzo Abe, was purged from public office and imprisoned for about three years. But his purge was later rescinded, and he joined active politics, eventually becoming the country's prime minister in 1957. Supported by anticommunist organizations, Kishi and other right-wing conservative politicians with deep roots in militarism have eroded the pacifist foundation of Japan's Constitution.

Today, Japan's military alliance with the US has been further strengthened, and aligning with this trend, right-wing politicians have continued to run the country. Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has also capitalized on this trend and demonstrated a strong militaristic stance in both words and actions. In November, she went to the extent of saying that a "Taiwan contingency would be a survival-threatening situation for Japan".

The provocative statement directed at China was unbecoming of the prime minister of a pacifist nation; it sounded more like something from the leader of a militarist nation. It is only natural that the Chinese government and people, who had focused on building a "strategic mutually beneficial relationship" with Japan, were outraged.

Postwar conservative powers that have led Japanese politics, supported by the emperor system and anti-communist organizations, can be considered the abyss of today's conservatism and militarization in Japan. Nurtured by the existence of the imperial system, in a transformed form, prewar militarism survived and has sprouted new roots in Japan. The Yasukuni ideology, which is at the core of today's new militaristic ideology, is also being revived. The notorious Yasukuni Shrine, where the remains of several war criminals are enshrined, is sometimes described as an invasion shrine. The appointment of a former SDF admiral as the chief priest of the shrine is symbolic of this revival.

If this trend continues, Japan could once again become the aggressive state it was under imperial rule before the war. Japanese conservative politicians and their supporters are aiming for hegemony over Asia by using the US-Japan military alliance and advancing military expansion. This strategy also involves instilling hostility toward China and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea in the minds of the public to divert attention from the pacifist ideals and to consolidate as well as expand conservative politicians' power.

What is important for Tokyo is to cultivate a proper understanding of history and establish a friendly and amicable relationship with China as well as a strategic, mutually beneficial relationship. It is increasingly necessary to pursue independent and autonomous peace diplomacy rather than a subservient defense diplomacy that aligns with the US. The promotion of China-Japan friendship will be the most effective and durable security policy for Japan.

The author is a professor emeritus at Yamaguchi University in Japan. 

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.