The Re-emergence of Militarism in Japan: Ironically Welcomed by Some of Its Former Victims

 

As much of the world was preoccupied with the war involving Iran, the Japanese destroyer JS Ikazuchi (雷) transited the Taiwan Strait on April 17, taking nearly 14 hours to complete the passage.

The date was striking. It marked the anniversary of the Treaty of Shimonoseki (马关条约 – Mǎguān Tiáoyuē), signed on April 17, 1895, which ended the First Sino-Japanese War and led to Taiwan being ceded to Japan. From Beijing’s perspective, the symbolism could hardly have gone unnoticed.

Why, then, has Sanae Takaichi adopted such a bold posture, despite Japan’s obvious military limitations in any direct confrontation with China? Apart from Lai Ching-te and Ferdinand Marcos Jr., many of Japan’s neighbours must be asking the same question.

My answer is straightforward: Takaichi appears determined to push Japan further away from post-war pacifism and toward a more assertive, militarised national posture.

Japan’s economic stagnation may not be incidental to this shift; it may be part of the reason for it. In her view, China is the central strategic challenge, and deterrence requires confrontation – political, military, economic, and psychological. She seems to believe that, if tensions were ever to escalate into open conflict, Japan would not stand alone. She also appears to assume that much of the region would quietly support its stance.

Even within her first months in office, she has begun steering Japan in a more openly strategic direction. She is pressing to revise Article 9 of the constitution – the clause renouncing war – so that Japan’s military can be more explicitly recognised and granted a broader defensive role. She is also promoting higher defence spending, pushing it toward 2% of GDP, accelerating military modernisation, and strengthening Japan’s counterstrike capabilities.

Japan has also moved to ease restrictions on overseas arms exports, a step that could support countries such as the Philippines and help build an Asia-Pacific defence network less dependent on China.

All of this points in one direction: Japan is repositioning itself to counter China’s growing power in East Asia.

Takaichi has also refused to retract her suggestion that a Chinese attack on Taiwan could amount to an “existential crisis” for Japan, despite pressure from Beijing.

Her economic policy reflects the same strategic logic. She favours reducing dependence on Chinese supply chains, especially in critical materials such as rare earths; tightening the screening of foreign investments and land acquisitions in sensitive sectors; and strengthening domestic resilience in areas such as energy, advanced technology, and semiconductors.

Diplomatically, she has adopted a more confrontational line toward Beijing, accusing China of coercion and aggressive behaviour, while at the same time expanding Japan’s internal security and intelligence capacity in response to concerns about Chinese influence and activity.

Taken together, these measures amount to one of the most significant shifts in Japan’s China policy since the end of the Second World War. Takaichi’s Japan no longer treats China merely as a difficult neighbour, but as a strategic rival of the highest order.

Takaichi also belongs to a generation with no personal memory of war. Born in 1961, she carries none of the direct burden of wartime experience. For many younger Japanese, the atrocities of the 1930s and 1940s belong to a distant historical past rather than a living moral inheritance. In that sense, Takaichi represents more than a policy shift: she reflects a broader desire among some Japanese to see their country stand tall again, militarily as well as economically.

Some historical and cultural background helps explain why this matters.

Shinto, Buddhism, and national identity

Although Shinto and Buddhism are fundamentally different in origin and worldview, they have long coexisted and intertwined in Japanese life.

Shinto is indigenous to Japan. It has no founder and no single sacred text. Buddhism, by contrast, arrived through China and Korea. Shinto centres on kami – spirits or deities associated with nature, place, and ancestry – and treats the world as sacred and continuous. Its emphasis is on purity, ritual, and harmony. Buddhism focuses more on impermanence, suffering, and the path toward liberation.

In practice, the two traditions have often merged rather than competed. This blending, known as Shinbutsu-shūgō, became a defining feature of Japanese religious life. Even today, it is common for a Japanese person to visit a Shinto shrine at the New Year, hold a Shinto wedding, and have a Buddhist funeral.

Shinto is therefore not merely a religion in the narrow sense. It is also bound up with memory, identity, ancestry, and place.

From sacred land to national myth

One of Shinto’s most politically potent ideas is that Japan is a special land of the kami, and that the emperor stands in a sacred lineage linked to the sun goddess Amaterasu. In times of national consolidation and expansion, this belief could be – and eventually was – transformed into political doctrine.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the Japanese state formalised these ideas into State Shinto, which promoted emperor worship, loyalty, sacrifice, and national unity. This became one of the ideological pillars of Japan’s pre-1945 nationalism and militarism. After the war, State Shinto was abolished, the emperor was stripped of divinity, and religion was formally separated from the state.

Yet historical beliefs do not vanish simply because legal structures change. The emotional and cultural residues often remain.

Beginning under Shinzo Abe, Japan’s foreign policy acquired a more openly nationalistic tone. Under Takaichi, that tendency appears to be sharpening further. Although she has not visited Yasukuni Shrine, the site remains a potent symbol of Japan’s unresolved relationship with its wartime past.

There is also the enduring cultural legacy of Bushidō – the “Way of the Warrior” – which prizes loyalty, honour, endurance, self-discipline, and readiness for sacrifice. Though often romanticised, Bushidō still echoes in Japanese corporate culture, martial traditions, and certain narratives of national character.

The Samurai legacy

The roots of Bushidō lie in the rise of the samurai, who emerged between roughly the 8th and 12th centuries as provincial warriors serving local elites. As the imperial court in Kyoto weakened, power flowed outward to armed regional clans.

The decisive shift came after the Genpei War (1180–1185), when the Minamoto defeated the Taira. Minamoto no Yoritomo established the first shogunate, inaugurating a political order in which warriors became the governing class.

Japan then entered centuries of military rule. Samurai served daimyo, and warfare became a recurrent feature of political life, particularly during the Sengoku period (roughly 1467–1615), when central authority fractured and rival lords fought for supremacy.

That era ended only with reunification under Oda Nobunaga, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, and finally Tokugawa Ieyasu, whose victory at the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600 cleared the way for the Tokugawa shogunate and more than two centuries of relative peace.

During the Edo period, samurai increasingly became administrators and scholars rather than battlefield fighters. It was also in this period that Bushidō was more systematically codified.

The practice of seppuku (hara-kiri) – ritual suicide in defence of honour – was closely associated with this ethos. It symbolised a moral world in which loyalty and honour could be valued above life itself.

The Meiji transformation (1868–1912) 

The Meiji Restoration radically transformed Japan. The country modernised at extraordinary speed, adopting Western-style institutions, military structures, and industrial systems. The samurai class was abolished, and the wearing of swords was banned.

Yet the samurai spirit did not disappear. It was absorbed into modern nationalism.

Although seppuku was formally outlawed, it survived as a symbolic gesture of ultimate loyalty or conviction. General Nogi Maresuke committed seppuku in 1912 after Emperor Meiji’s death. At the end of the Second World War, some Japanese officers chose suicide over surrender. In 1970, Yukio Mishima famously performed seppuku after a failed attempt to incite a nationalist military revival.

The samurai vanished as a social class, but not as a psychological and cultural ideal.

Why this still matters

Concern over Japan’s historical memory did not disappear with the post-war settlement. Since the 1980s, critics have repeatedly accused Japan of downplaying or softening its wartime aggression, especially regarding the Nanjing Massacre, the issue of comfort women, and the use of forced labour in Korea and China.

Japan does not use a single state textbook; schools choose from a range of approved texts. Even so, critics argue that descriptions of wartime conduct are often softened. Invasions may be described in euphemistic terms, while atrocities receive limited treatment. By contrast, the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki understandably occupy a central place in Japanese public memory, reinforcing an image of Japan as victim as well as aggressor.

There have, of course, been important official statements of remorse. In 1993, Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono acknowledged the role of the Japanese military in the coercion of comfort women and expressed “sincere apologies and remorse.”

In 1995, Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama explicitly referred to Japan’s “colonial rule and aggression” and the “tremendous damage and suffering” they caused. That remains the clearest and most important official apology Japan has issued.

In 2015, Shinzo Abe reaffirmed previous apologies and spoke of “deep remorse”, though many observers found the language more indirect than Murayama’s.

Emperor Akihito also expressed deep remorse and a desire that the horrors of war never be repeated.

The problem is not the absence of apologies, but the inconsistency of the political culture surrounding them. When later politicians cast doubt on earlier statements, or when senior figures visit Yasukuni Shrine, many in China and Korea conclude that remorse has not been fully internalised. The issue is ultimately one of credibility, continuity, and moral seriousness.

The legacy of Japan’s rise

Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) transformed global perceptions. For the first time in the modern era, an Asian power had decisively defeated a major European empire. The shock was immense.

Japan’s success shattered the myth of European invincibility and gave powerful momentum to the idea that Asia could resist Western domination. Later, this fed into Japan’s vision of a Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, presented as an Asian bloc free from Western colonial rule.

In reality, the project was less a partnership of equals than a structure of Japanese dominance. Japan needed oil, rubber, iron, and strategic depth. Expansion into East and Southeast Asia was driven not only by ideology but by the logic of empire, resources, and war.

This history matters because it shaped Japanese self-perception. Military success, rapid modernisation, and later economic power all contributed to a sense that Japan was uniquely capable, disciplined, and destined for regional leadership.

China in Japanese strategic imagination

Japan has long studied Chinese civilisation closely. Confucianism, Sun Tzu’s Art of War, and classics such as the Romance of the Three Kingdoms have all had deep influence in Japan. In some periods, Japanese and Korean engagement with Chinese philosophy has arguably been more systematic than China’s own popular relationship with its classical inheritance.

The first great military confrontation between the Japanese archipelago and a Chinese-ruled empire came under the Yuan, when Kublai Khan attempted to subdue Japan. The invasions failed, in part because of storms later remembered as the Divine Wind, or kamikaze. Over time, this entered Japanese consciousness as a symbol of providential protection.

Japan’s memory of the Second World War has been most selective. Many Japanese did not feel they had been defeated by China, but by the overwhelming industrial and military power of the United States, culminating in the atomic bombings. Meanwhile, modern Japanese views of China were shaped over a long period in which China appeared poor, unstable, divided, and vulnerable.

Japan’s post-war economic resurgence only reinforced this contrast. Under American protection, it became one of the world’s great economic powers. Its industries, brands, and commercial reach gave it confidence and prestige. For decades, many Japanese saw China as backward and dependent, even while Japanese capital and business flowed into the Chinese market.

Although China has since risen dramatically, social perceptions often lag behind geopolitical reality. Many Chinese still seek opportunities in Japan, and large numbers travel there. At the same time, some Japanese continue to draw broad and often unflattering conclusions about China from limited social encounters. Younger Japanese, moreover, tend to orient culturally toward Europe and the United States rather than toward China.

This helps explain why some in Japan find it difficult to accept China as the region’s pre-eminent power. Historical memory, civilisational pride, and modern identity all work against that acceptance.

The danger of misreading China

The central risk, in my view, is that Japanese nationalism may be reviving at precisely the moment when China is least willing to tolerate strategic provocation.

If Takaichi and those around her misread contemporary China as if it were still weak, divided, or psychologically deferential, they may be operating under deeply outdated assumptions. China today sees itself not merely as a nation-state, but as a civilisational power with long historical memory, strategic patience, and growing military capability.

That is why the current trajectory is dangerous. Symbolic gestures, constitutional revision, military normalisation, strategic decoupling, and ideological hardening may each be defensible in isolation.

Taken together, however, they suggest a Japan increasingly willing to test limits that earlier generations were more careful not to touch.

History does not repeat itself mechanically. But nations often return to old instincts in new forms. If that is what is now happening in Japan, the rest of Asia has reason to pay attention.

End