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Denying culpability for past aggression is a dangerous invite to its recurrence

China Daily | Updated: 2026-04-22 00:00
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On Monday, Tokyo's political class, including Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, gathered at a memorial service to honor former Japanese prime minister Tomiichi Murayama, who issued a Cabinet-endorsed statement in his name in 1995 acknowledging that Japan followed a mistaken national policy when it advanced along the road to war.

Murayama's 1995 statement remains the closest Japan has come to a moral reckoning with its imperial past. It acknowledged the "tremendous damage and suffering" inflicted across Asia and expressed "deep remorse" and a "heartfelt apology".

Yet on Tuesday, despite strong opposition from home and abroad, Takaichi dispatched a ritual offering to the notorious Yasukuni Shrine — a site that enshrines, among others, 14 Class-A war criminals.

For all victim nations of Japan's past aggression, the Japanese leader's offering to the Yasukuni Shrine is a political statement. It shows disregard for the victims who bore the brunt of Japan's aggression, and serves only as a testament to the revival of militarism in the country.

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the Tokyo Trials, which helped establish the legal and moral framework for judging Japan's wartime leaders. That anniversary ought to invite reflection. Instead, it coincides with a disturbing shift in Tokyo's security posture — one that suggests reflection is giving way to revision.

The Takaichi government's decision this week to loosen the rules that limited Japan's defense equipment exports to five noncombat categories, namely for rescue, transport, warning, surveillance, and minesweeping purposes, is emblematic of this. Japan's long-standing restrictions on military equipment exports had kept arms sales tightly constrained. The revised rules open the door to exporting lethal equipment to other countries and regions, with parliamentary oversight diluted to post hoc notification.

The Takaichi government has been swift to act on the change in rules, signing a deal on Saturday worth A$10 billion ($6.5 billion) to supply Australia with warships. Taken together, these moves amount to something even more consequential than they are in isolation: the erosion of the postwar international order.

Public opinion in Japan is notably not fully on board. Tens of thousands of protesters gathered near the National Diet this week to defend Article 9 and the Constitution. Their slogans — "No to war", "Do not undermine Article 9" — echo a sentiment that has long underpinned Japan's stability: that its security lies in peace. The Japanese people are wary of the so-called "defensive" arguments sliding into offensive doctrines.

This is where the Yasukuni Shrine returns to center stage. Visits or offerings by serving leaders constitute an evasion of Japan's own wartime culpability, a desecration of historical justice and a direct provocation against the nations it once invaded, as Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun said on Tuesday. In the context of expanding military ambitions, that evasion becomes a perilous signal. To honor Murayama one day and send an offering to the Yasukuni Shrine the next exposes Takaichi's hypocrisy.

This points to the deeper issue of whether Japan is intent on unraveling the moral compact that has underwritten its postwar development. That compact rests on three pillars: acknowledgment of past aggression, constitutional restraint and regional trust. Undermine one, and the others begin to wobble.

To forget history is to betray it; to deny culpability is to invite its recurrence. The postwar international order in Asia was built on the premise that the past had been reckoned with, not rewritten. Erode that premise, and the region's fault lines come into sharper focus.

At this critical juncture, when regional countries are prioritizing peace and development, Japan must squarely face the fact that all peace-loving forces around the world will never allow a new form of militarism to gain ground and threaten regional stability. On the contrary, they will undoubtedly confront and push back against it with full resolve, as Guo noted.

Takaichi should listen to the protesters outside parliament and heed the legacy of Murayama.

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