opinion

The munitions industry of Japan is going through an unusual boom.

According to a recent report of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute of Sweden, five Japanese companies were included in the list of 100 munitions companies with the greatest sales on the global scale last year, with their total value reaching nearly US$10 billion (1 500 billion yen), a 35% increase as against the year before. All their products were sold in the country.

Meanwhile, the Japanese Defense Ministry hosted an exhibition in Tokyo Metropolis in early December in order to promote businesses to be engaged in the defence industry. At least 40 small- and medium-sized enterprises possessing technologies including those of drone, outer space and medicine took part in the exhibition.

At the exhibition, the advisor to the Defense Minister said that the application of advanced technologies and their products in manufacturing, maintaining and readjusting defence equipment would lead to the attainment of technical superiority and the reinforcement of supply network, in his attempt to tempt those businesses.

The Japanese authorities’ stepping up of the militarization of industries is further arousing the vigilance of the international community.

Japan has already removed all legal barriers one by one standing in the way of overseas aggression and fixed overseas military activities as one of main missions of the Self-Defense Forces and expanded its scope to the worldwide scale. It is systematically increasing military expenditure and investing a colossal sum of money to the development and production of new military hardware after completely switching its military policy from “exclusive defence” over to a preemptive strike strategy.

In recent years alone, it has been hell-bent on massively importing cutting-edge military hardware including stealth fighters and beefing up its naval and air forces through the building of various kinds of warships and remodelling of fighter jets.

It also tries to increase its military expenditure to the level of more than 2% of its GDP in the near future. If so, its “defense expenses” will take the world’s third place.

Though Japan tries to justify its moves to build a military power under the signboard of “peace” and “defence”, they are nothing but a reckless move to realize the old dream of “Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere” it failed to realize in the past.

If Japan follows the road of reinvasion out of an anachronistic ambition for hegemony, it will surely lead to self-destruction.