By Xiang Haoyu
An active-duty officer of the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF)intruded into the Chinese Embassy in Japan with a knife on March 24, which has shocked the international community. This incident, unprecedented in post-war Japan, has exposed the undercurrents long concealed beneath Japan's self-proclaimed image as a "peaceful nation." Such violent acts by active-duty military personnel targeting the diplomatic institutions of a specific country not only reveal deep-seated institutional problems within the JSDF but also reflect the severe erosion of Japanese society by rightward political polarization and extreme nationalism.
The ability of violent and xenophobic far-right ideology infiltrating Japanese society and even its armed forces from top to bottom is the result of the combined effects of the long-standing lack of proper historical education in Japan and the continuous rightward shift in its political landscape.
On one hand, unlike post-war Germany, which carried out a thorough reckoning with its past, Japan has never completely eradicated the soil of militarism across its society after WWII. For a long time, Japan's right-wing conservative forces have vigorously promoted historical revisionism, tampering with textbooks, downplaying, whitewashing or even denying its history of aggression, and repackaging the narrative of Japan's victimization of its Asian neighbors and the damage it inflicted on the region into a distorted version portraying Japan as a "victim" or a so-called defender of regional order. Such top-down ideological manipulation has seriously poisoned public opinion in Japanese society.
On the other hand, many right-wing conservative politicians in Japan, driven by personal political interests and in an attempt to divert domestic contradictions, have been keen to exaggerate external threats, hyping up the so-called "China Threat Theory," inciting anti-China and xenophobic sentiments among the public, and even colluding with online far-right groups to spread hatred toward China.
It must be pointed out that the concept of neo-militarism proposed by the Chinese academic community is not a simple recurrence of pre-WWII militarism, but rather a mutated revival of the lingering legacy of Japanese militarism under contemporary political conditions. Under the banner of "normalizing" the country, Japan is developing the so-called independent defense capabilities. The danger lies in the fact that such efforts, through radical policy measures, are effectively hollowing out the constraints of its pacifist constitution and breaking through the post-war peace framework. In terms of discourse and narrative, right-wing conservative forces are vigorously promoting a sense of national superiority and pride, exaggerating external threats such as a so-called "survival-threatening situation," while engaging in bloc confrontation in the region, stoking geopolitical tensions, and expanding their military and security influence. These practices are, in essence, no different from pre-war militarism.
In light of a series of structural problems exposed in Japan in recent years, it can be clearly seen that a dangerous closed loop of "pre-war regression" is taking shape. The knife-wielding intrusion into the embassy is merely one uncontrolled spillover from this closed loop. Following the incident, some visionary Japanese people pointed out on social media that military academies such as the National Defense Academy (NDA) of Japan frequently invite far-right scholars to give lectures, and that incidents such as groups of cadets collectively visiting the Yasukuni Shrine have circulated online. These phenomena further reveal that rightward political radicalization is distorting the ideological foundations of Japan's future military command echelon at the very source of education. The JSDF, which are supposed to be a peace-preserving force under strict constraints and control, may instead become a breeding ground for Japan's right-wing forces to pursue their radical political agenda.
More importantly, a Japan that tolerates extremist ideologies at home while becoming increasingly aggressive in its foreign policy is undoubtedly more dangerous, a development that warrants high vigilance from all Asian countries. Japanese leaders have repeatedly claimed that the door for dialogue with China remains open and that bilateral relations should be handled in a calm manner, yet their long-standing policies of containing and countering China have continuously nurtured the soil for extremism. If the Japanese side fails to draw profound lessons from this incident and handle it properly but instead allows the lingering legacy of militarism to grow and spread, it will ultimately undermine Japan's post-war achievements in peaceful development and may once again bring harm to the region.
(The author is a distinguished research fellow at the Department for Asia-Pacific Studies, China Institute of International Studies)
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.