A 'lighthouse' pointing toward peril: China Daily editorial

It is absurd that Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi spoke of Japan becoming an "Indo-Pacific lighthouse" on Saturday, the 81st anniversary of Japan's unconditional surrender to the Allied Powers that ended World War II. The country has not even earned the trust of its neighbors — countries that still remember what happened the last time Tokyo cast itself as a regional "architect" of the infamous "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere".

The notorious Yasukuni Shrine, to which Takaichi performed a remote act of worship and sent a ritual offering that day, makes that absurdity impossible to miss. The shrine enshrines 14 Class-A war criminals from WWII. Before taking office last October, Takaichi had visited the shrine more than 10 times over the course of her political career.

On Saturday, she stood across the road, went through the motions — two bows, two claps, one bow — just near enough to appease her nationalist supporting base, but far enough, as she wished, to sidestep a harsh international outcry. In truth, however, it was nothing but a grotesque flirtation with the convicted war criminals.

Several of her Cabinet members, including Japanese Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi, went further and visited the shrine in person.

The ceremony thus raises an unavoidable question: Is Japan commemorating its "war victims", or glorifying those who orchestrated a war of aggression?

Imagine a European government openly paying tribute to senior Nazi war criminals and then explaining it was merely honoring "war victims". The world would immediately grasp how grotesque that argument sounds. Germany learned that reconciliation demands confronting the harm it inflicted on others. Japan, by contrast, has not even shown a willingness to begin that journey.

In its word game, the Takaichi government increasingly presents Japan as a regional "model" to build a "free and open Indo-Pacific". Yet this vocabulary risks becoming a linguistic escape hatch from history. The more Japan talks about its fictional "role", the less its leaders seem willing to talk about the uncomfortable truths of the past.

Takaichi's omission was therefore as significant as her words. She mourned Japanese "victims" and spoke of Japan's postwar "contribution" to "peace". But there was no acknowledgment of the sufferings inflicted on other nations, no apology and no remorse for Japan's responsibility.

It is hypocritical to preach "peace" while bowing before the "chief culprits of war", as China's Ministry of National Defense said in response to Tokyo's Saturday farce.

Japan's historical militarists were experts at feigning innocence and victimhood while committing aggression, pillage and killing. Today's neo-militarists have shown they are just as good at playing innocent. Whether they will be allowed to also follow the same path of aggression, plunder and slaughter is the test the international community cannot afford to fail.

In less than a year, the Takaichi government has systematically accelerated Japan's remilitarization from policy to capacity. Its recent handling of the yen, however, has laid bare the economic burden that rhetoric alone cannot conceal.

A weak yen boosts exporters, but it also raises the cost of energy, food and military equipment, squeezing households while making Japan's expanding military budget more expensive. Tokyo is now caught in an uncomfortable triangle: a stronger yen, fiscal expansion and rapid military buildup cannot be pursued indefinitely without trade-offs.

Washington wants Japan to increase its military spending and become a military pillar of the "Indo-Pacific" strategy, but it also has little appetite for a persistently undervalued yen that aggravates trade tensions and financial instability.

So the currency collusion between Tokyo and Washington over the past weeks is not simply about exchange rates or interest rates; it reflects the deeper economic needs of their geopolitical calculations.

Japan is trying to build itself into a war machine again while its economic foundations remain fragile. The currency manipulation may ultimately prove that it is the Japanese people that will have to pay the bill for the rise of neo-militarism.

Takaichi therefore has little choice but to talk emptily about "peace" and the country being a "lighthouse", while saying nothing about Japan's war crimes, responsibility and other nations' sufferings. Only by creating an atmosphere bordering on political indoctrination can she better numb the Japanese public into accepting — and paying for — the country's neo-militarism.

The nations that once fell victim to Japanese aggression have an obligation to keep the historical record straight — especially when Japan persists in its unrepentant stance — to ensure the international community, including the Japanese people themselves, remains vigilant against the dangerous direction in which the "lighthouse" peddled by Takaichi is pointing.