Sixty-nine years ago, Japan signed surrender documents aboard the deck of the American battleship USS Missouri, marking an end to the world's anti-fascist war as well as China's anti-Japanese war.

The triumph of justice over evil opened a new epoch in which the mankind took a huge step toward peace and order.

However, it was a hard-won victory. On the land of China alone, millions of people were killed during the Japanese aggression from 1931 to 1945.

This year, Beijing designated September 3 as the victory day of China's anti-Japanese war. The grandness of the commemoration does not only mean to celebrate, but to warn the world that the militaristic and rightist sentiments that once led Japan astray down the path of aggression are once again spreading in the island nation.

In sheer defiance of postwar international order and law, Japan in recent years announced "nationalization" of the Diaoyu Islands, which are an integral part of the Chinese territory. It also picked fights with other neighbors and former war victims over land disputes.

The Japanese right wing has also been twisting facts in history textbooks and paying repeated visits to the notorious Yasukuni Shrine, which honors top war criminals, in a bid to gloss over the nature of war.

More dangerously, the Japanese government, with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at the helm, drastically changed its defense stance by reinterpreting a war-renouncing constitution to allow the Self-Defense Forces to exercise the right to collective self-defense, sowing the seeds of instability in the Asia-Pacific region.

It should sound the alarm to the world, since rightist sentiments thrived in Japan right before WWII.

Now, instead of indulging Japan for some short-time interests, world powers should join hands to pull back Tokyo from its militaristic path, since a war would bring devastating results to every country in the world.

The resurrection of militarism should also alarm Japan itself. The barrage of words and deeds by rightist politicians has been isolating Japan from a world that is in pursuit of peace of prosperity.

The world is different from decades ago, as it becomes ever more globalized and the well-being of one country is ever more connected with the well-being with others.

No country could thrive alone in a turbulent region. Not to mention that Japan, which grew into the world's second largest economy after WWII, is itself a beneficiary of the postwar peace and order.

It is foolish to make the same mistake twice. It is advisable for the current Japanese leaders to truly reflect upon the lessons of history so as to avert a risky future.