Hell-raiser from Asia: 81 years after World War II Japan is obsessed with militarism again

The draft of Japan’s 2026 Defence White Paper, published in May, offers yet another illustration of the extent to which the country’s political and military leadership has become literally wedded to the idea of magnifying both its defensive and offensive capabilities, and to constructing its own security at the expense of others.

Shifting the Emphasis

The principal problem with the 2026 White Paper, however, resides in its attempt to shift the focus entirely away from one source of threats to regional security in Pacific Asia onto another. The document presents Japan as a harmless, squeaky-clean nation, facing its gravest threat from none other than the build-up of China’s military power – so grave, in fact, that the former empire apparently has no choice but to arm itself to the teeth.

Chinese observers have already compared the document’s contents to the script of a film in which the People’s Republic of China is cast as the arch-villain, having pointed out the hypocrisy with which Japan’s military establishment presents its own version of the situation in the Asia-Pacific region. According to the Japanese logic, it seems that the presence of the Chinese navy in the Pacific constitutes alarming military activity, whereas American, Japanese and Australian vessels scurrying about the same waters are perfectly unremarkable, as if it went without saying; patrol operations by the Chinese navy are provocations, yet when Japan and the United States do exactly the same thing, it is simply freedom of navigation; China’s routine military exercises pose an existential threat, while the manoeuvres of the US-Japan alliance (involving, for example, B-52 bombers) are merely a pleasant, routine way to spend time together. Japan’s own military build-up, meanwhile, is presented as nothing short of a moral imperative.

Brer Conflict-Monger and Brer Imperialist

Does it ring a bell? It undoubtedly does – it is that very same thuggish ‘rules-based order’ in which some are permitted to stand on their heads, while others are expected, so as to speak, to sit tight and keep their heads down, because the rules were........

© New Eastern Outlook