By Wang Qiang

The US-Japan joint military exercise "Keen Sword 27" kicked off on October 19. On the same day, Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi sent a monetary offering to the infamous Yasukuni Shrine. Clearly, Japan's moves go far beyond what is needed for domestic political messaging, rather, they are intended to create a historical atmosphere conducive to breaking free from post-war military constraints and to fueling "neo-militarism."

In fact, the Takaichi administration's "spiritual conjuring" of war criminals serves precisely to facilitate a "practical unshackling" of Japan's offensive military capabilities. Featuring a massive scale and multiple service branches, "Keen Sword 27" sees the Japan Ground, Maritime, and Air Self-Defense Forces conducting extensive joint operations with US forces, with training increasingly centered on long-range firepower, cross-service coordination, and island-oriented combat capabilities.

Alarmingly, Japan will for the first time employ its Type-25 surface-to-ship missile—with a range exceeding 1,000 kilometers—in realistic combat scenarios during the drill, marking a transition of its offensive military capability from theoretical concepts to actual operational deployment. While paying lip service to an "exclusively defense-oriented policy," Japan is actively rehearsing long-range strikes and forward intervention. The red line set by Article 9 of Japan's pacifist constitution is thus being fundamentally hollowed out by right-wing politicians.

Under current circumstances, staging joint military drills of such scale between Japan and the US in Northeast Asia and even the Western Pacific carries sensitive political undertones aimed at destabilizing regional security and the global landscape. Crucially, as the drills focus on Japan's so-called Nansei Islands—featuring subjects like "island retaking" and "sea-air reinforcement"—they signal a major directional shift in Japan's military evolution. That the exercise scenario explicitly simulates intervention in a Taiwan Strait military conflict further proves that the Takaichi administration is bent on turning the Japanese homeland into a front line for major-power competition.

Meanwhile, Japan is co-opting multiple countries into the exercise in a bid to introduce external forces into the Western Pacific and forge exclusive military cliques. Such moves heighten the risk of bloc confrontation, send dangerous signals to "Taiwan independence" forces seeking "independence by force," and jeopardize peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait and East Asia.

The joint military exercise and the monetary offering to a shrine honoring war criminals represent coordinated military and political moves. They clearly reflect the Takaichi government's political agenda of steadily dismantling post-war constraints on military expansion while obscuring Japan's responsibility for its past aggression. Since entering politics, Takaichi has repeatedly and openly denied such historical facts as the Nanjing Massacre and the forced enslavement of "comfort women," and has portrayed Japan's aggression against China following the September 18 Incident as a "war of self-defense."An offering to Class-A war criminals is by no means a matter of "personal belief."Rather, it amounts to a declaration, made in her capacity as head of government, of a political determination to rewrite history to the Japanese public, particularly the country's right wing. Japanese constitutional scholar Masahiko Shimizu put it bluntly: "Visits by Japanese politicians to Yasukuni Shrine are like a German president or chancellor visiting Hitler's grave. From a historical perspective, they are completely unacceptable."

For post-war Japan, developing defensive capabilities and pursuing remilitarization are two fundamentally different concepts. Japan must not cling to a militarist view of history while continuing to breach the constraints of its Pacifist constitution in the name of security. The more Japan aspires to become a "normal country," the more it should demonstrate to the international community that it can confront its history of aggression in a forthright and honest manner and truly cast off the legacy of militarism.

(The author is a scholar of national security strategy)

Editor's Note: Originally published on huanqiu.com, 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.