Opinion

In the New Year too, Japan persists in its worrisome moves to rush into a military power.

On January 3, a Japanese government official disclosed that a policy was formulated to loosen the working guide of “three principles of defense equipment transfer” so as to enable Japan to export or jointly develop and produce different kinds of weapons in the year 2023.

This will revitalize the munitions industry of Japan and enable it to deliver tanks, missiles, combat airplanes and other weapons with killing capacity to any part of the world at will, including disputed regions.

To state the conclusion first, Japan, which was termed by the UN Charter as an “enemy state” as it was one of the criminal states during the Second World War, has today shown its true colors as a warlike state, throwing off its mask of a “pacifist state”, 77 years after the war.

When we look at the 2010s alone, the Japanese authorities deceived the international community continuously in security-related issues, just carrying two faces under one hood.

In 2014 when Abe took power, Japan abolished the “three principles of arms export” which had prohibited in principle the export of weapons and came out with the “three principles of defense equipment transfer” to pave the way for overseas export and joint development of defense equipment.

It also approved the exercise of the right to “collective self-defense” by changing the interpretation of the constitution in 2014 and adopted the Security Law in 2015. And in 2022 it legalized the possession of capability for preemptive strike, including the possession of “counterattack capability”, by adopting three major documents on security.

As a result, the principle of “total defense” stipulated in Article 9 of the pacifist constitution that has existed since 1947 has now been reduced to a mere scrap of paper and a legal framework has been created, allowing Japan to launch a war at any time.

It is no accident that voices of concern and anxiety are even growing within Japan criticizing such moves as “an act of ensuring security that instigates arms race”, “betrayal of predecessors’ post-war efforts to keep peace in Japan” and so on.

This only makes it clear that Japan, though outwardly trumpeting a “pacifist state”, is destroying and endangering peace and stability of the region and international community by aggravating situation and arms race.