Japan has been ramping up its efforts to militarize in recent years to such an extent that it has been said that its so-called pacifist Constitution is all but dead.
Hammering another nail in its coffin, the government is expected to finalize three documents this week outlining an overhaul of its defense and security strategy.
As well as significantly increasing the military budget and reshaping its military command structure, it is expected that it will enable the country to acquire first-strike capability, which Japan is euphemistically calling "counterstrike capacity".
Japan is using China as the justification for this military build-up. Over the years, as it has pressed against the restraints of the Constitution, Japan has ramped up the tone of alarm in relation to its neighbor, which has gone from being portrayed as a "worry" to "serious concern" to being a perceived threat.
According to Japanese media outlets, Komeito, the junior partner in the ruling coalition, which pays relatively higher attention to the relationship with China, advocated using a word softer than "threat", which is what the Liberal Democratic Party wanted to use, so they reached a compromise by saying that China is "viewed by people in the region as a threat".
The positioning of China as a threat, in whatever wording, comes despite Beijing repeatedly urging Tokyo to uphold the consensus that the two countries should be cooperative partners and not threaten each other. Yet Japan has recently announced plans to develop a next-generation fighter jet with Italy and the United Kingdom; it is reportedly considering purchasing 500 Tomahawk cruise missiles from the US and deploying missile units on one of its westernmost islands near China, and has been studying the feasibility of stationing additional electronic warfare units on its westernmost inhabited island, Yonaguni.
Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida visited Japanese troops on Yonaguni in April last year, and remarked how he could almost see the coast of the Chinese island Taiwan, which is about 111 kilometers away. Not coincidently, Japan is one of the countries most actively encouraging the secessionist forces on the Taiwan island.
Which country is being threatening?
Japan may play games with the wording of the documents, but it is clear that the right-wingers in Japan are inclined to portray China as a "threat" so they can realize the country's full militarization. That is a worrying prospect for the region, given the country's traditionally militaristic culture and the misfortune and suffering that caused in the not-so-distant past.
Tokyo should reflect on the fact that Tuesday marked the day of the month when in 1937 troops of the Imperial Japanese Army occupied Nanjing, East China's Jiangsu province, and began an organized massacre of the disarmed soldiers and civilians there. The Japanese government has never issued any formal apology to China for the atrocity. Instead, one politician after another tries to open the seal on the country's Constitution to put the country on the path of militarism.
