Experts warn of dangerous signs of Japan's militarism revival

BEIJING, Nov. 26 (Xinhua) -- Experts in both China and Japan have warned that the international community must remain very vigilant against the dangerous trend reflected in Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's recent Taiwan-related remarks, which revealed Japan blatantly undermining the post-war international order and reviving militarism.

Takaichi said on an official occasion that the Chinese mainland's "use of force on Taiwan" could constitute a "survival-threatening situation" for Japan and implied the possibility of Japan's armed intervention in the Taiwan Strait. Despite multiple representations and protests from China, the Japanese side has refused to retract the remarks.

Xiang Haoyu, a research fellow in the Department for Asia-Pacific Studies of the China Institute of International Studies (CIIS), stated that as Japan's incumbent prime minister, Takaichi's comments indicate that the right-wing forces in Japan are attempting to use the "China threat" rhetoric and tensions in the Taiwan Strait as pretexts to break free from its pacifist constitution and promote their agenda to remilitarize the country.

Xiang noted that this dangerous sign requires intense attention from the international community.

Su Xiaohui, a CIIS associate research fellow, believes that the recent erroneous statements by Takaichi were driven not only by her personal political needs to cater to domestic right-wing forces, but also signaled a deeper and ongoing trend of political rightward shift in Japan. The ultimate aim is to break the "exclusively defense-oriented policy" established in Japan's constitution, an attempt that poses a serious threat to regional security.

The Potsdam Proclamation explicitly stipulates Japan's complete disarmament, and Japan's pacifist constitution also pledges to "forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes." These provisions are the conditions under which post-war Japan was accepted by the international community, and they are international law obligations that Japan must abide by, Su said.

Wang Xu, a researcher at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, believes that Japan's recent remarks suggesting the possibility of armed intervention in the Taiwan Strait situation constitute a blatant threat of war. She said a series of actions by Japan in recent years have effectively undermined and altered the principle of the exclusively defense-oriented policy, both institutionally and substantively.

The experts also pointed out that cooking up external threats and creating a "sense of crisis" have been an old tactic of Japanese militarist forces. In the past, Japan has repeatedly used similar pretexts to launch wars of aggression and disrupt regional peace.

In 1931, Japan claimed whether it could seize "Manchuria" was a "survival-threatening" issue and used that as a pretext to invade and occupy northeast China.

It later claimed that defending "the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" was an existential battle for Japan, and used that to expand its aggression to the entire Asia.

It attacked the Pearl Harbor using the same pretext, bringing the war to the Pacific ocean.

However, the absurd logic of viewing the territory of other nations as essential to its own survival and accompanying acts inevitably lead to its own failure.

Japanese scholars are also expressing their clear disagreement with Takaichi's relevant comments. Magosaki Ukeru, a former Japanese foreign ministry official, pointed out that such claims are completely unfounded. Noting that the Taiwan question is purely China's internal affair, he said the Japanese government should strictly adhere to its political commitments regarding Taiwan.