By Yang Hongjun
Recently, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi successively offered a ritual offering and a cash offering (tamagushi-ryo) to Yasukuni Shrine, while a group of Japanese lawmakers paid a collective visit to the shrine. In the special year marking the 80th anniversary of the opening of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East, commonly known as the Tokyo Trials, Japanese right-wing forces led by Takaichi are openly attempting to whitewash historical crimes and glorify war criminals. This is a serious provocation against international justice and a blatant trampling on human conscience.
Since taking office, Takaichi has repeatedly engaged in perverse actions, including blatantly making erroneous remarks on the Taiwan question, dispatching vessels of the Japan Self-Defense Forces through the Taiwan Strait for deliberate provocation, revising the Three Principles on Transfer of Defense Equipment and Technology, and pushing stubbornly for amendments to Article 9 of the Constitution of Japan. These moves have exposed her ambitions to overturn the foundations of the postwar international order and achieve Japan's strategic goal of becoming a major political and military power through constitutional revision and military expansion. Japan's neo-militarism has already shown its fangs, gaining dangerous momentum and once again threatening regional peace and stability.
The fallacious historical view embraced by right-wing Japanese politicians such as Takaichi is rooted in the militarist ideological system that Japan gradually constructed since modern times, which ultimately drove the country into the abyss of destruction. As early as the initial success of the Meiji Restoration, Fukuzawa Yukichi, an imperialist expansionist who upheld the emperor system, advocated that Japan should become the "leader of Eastern civilization." He argued that Japan should "protect" the "East of Asia," compel China and Korea to follow Japan into what he called "civilization," and even "force their progress through military means." This not only initiated Japan's so-called "judgment of civilization" over its Asian neighbors, but also provided a preposterous excuse for launching wars of aggression.
After the First Sino-Japanese War (1894-1895) and the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), Japan positioned itself as the so-called "spokesperson" of Western civilization in Asia. Domestically, it bound the Japanese people to the chariot of militarism. Externally, it annexed Korea and continuously expanded its aggression against China, while extensively infiltrating and interfering in the modernization processes of Asian countries across political, economic, and ideological fields, among others. During this period, Japan established a colonial expansion path under the banner of so-called "civilization and enlightenment," along with a discourse power system disguised as "judgment of civilization." This ultimately evolved into monstrous crimes under the mask of the so-called "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere," bringing unprecedented catastrophe to human civilization.
To this day, Japan's right wing continues to promote historical revisionism, constitutional revision, and military expansion by relying on the same extremely flawed and dangerous logic of perception and narrative. During the administration of former Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, the so-called "values-oriented diplomacy" was introduced and comprehensively strengthened. This evolved into the narrative of a so-called "free and open Indo-Pacific" strategy, which gradually became a strategic tool for Japan to break away from the postwar system and pursue its transformation into a major political and military power. Under this false narrative, Japan portrays itself as a so-called "model student of democracy" and looks down on other countries with a sense of values-based arrogance. This is essentially no different from Japan's so-called "judgment of civilization" over neighboring countries since modern times, and carries strong elements of deception and danger. Using ideology as a cover to advance geopolitical and military strategy, the real intention of Japan's right wing is expansion, nothing less than the revival and mutation of militarist thinking in the 21st century. Since the establishment of the Takaichi administration, provocative actions have continued without pause. This represents a dangerous escalation of the line pursued by Abe. Cloaked in the rhetoric of values and advancing through confrontation with neighboring countries, its dangerous logic of seeking to turn Japan into a major political and military power is increasingly clear.
The open worship of war criminals by Japan's right-wing politicians and their push for constitutional revision and military expansion are two sides of the same coin, fully exposing their obsession with and delusion of becoming the so-called "leader of Eastern civilization." History offers clear lessons. Japanese militarism once carried out the destruction of civilization in the name of so-called "civilization and enlightenment," and fabricated a so-called "survival-threatening situation" to justify its crimes of aggression.
Historical memory must not be erased, and justice must not be challenged. In the face of Japan's right wing distorting history and whitewashing aggression, and as neo-militarism continues to bare its evil fangs, all peace-loving countries and peoples should remain highly vigilant and firmly oppose such dangerous moves.
(The author is dean of the School of Languages and Cultures, Nanjing Tech University)
Editor's note: Originally published on people.com.cn, this article is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information and opinions in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.