By Zhong Sheng, People’s Daily
At a time when Japan’s Takaichi administration has stirred up trouble over the Taiwan question and driven itself into a diplomatic cul-de-sac, Japanese Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi has been loudly hyping up the so-called “radar illumination” incident.
Koizumi first falsely claimed that Japan had received no notification from the Chinese side; after China released audio recordings of the relevant communication, he adjusted his stance, asserting that the information provided by China was “insufficient.”
Reports indicate that the Secretary General of Japan’s National Security Secretariat has also recently contacted officials from the UK, France, Germany, Canada and other countries, scrambling to justify and lobby for Takaichi’s remarks concerning Taiwan.
He claimed that Takaichi’s statements at the Diet meeting did not alter Japan’s long-standing position on Taiwan and that China’s criticism of Japan was “inconsistent with the facts.”
The series of maneuvers by Japanese politicians once again fully exposed their habitual dishonesty. They are adept at turning black into white, distorting the truth, and engaging in deceptive diplomacy, attempting to feign innocence and win sympathy on the international stage.
When a country consistently builds its policies on falsehoods, what does this mean for regional and global stability? History offers sobering insights.
“In all my fifty years of public service I have never seen a document that was more crowded with infamous falsehoods and distortions on a scale so huge that I never imagined until today that any government on this planet was capable of uttering them.” These words were spoken by former U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull.
After deciding to go to war against the United States in 1941, Japan secretly prepared for hostilities while continuing to dispatch so-called “peace envoys” to Washington, striking a pose of pursuing negotiations.
In the process, Japan deliberately sought to make greater use of Japanese Ambassador to the United States Kichisaburo Nomura, who had long been acquainted with then U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
After Japan’s surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, Hull received Japan’s note announcing the “termination of negotiations” and, in a state of profound indignation, uttered the words quoted above.
In his subsequent address to Congress requesting a declaration of war against Japan, Roosevelt also made a point of telling the American people that the United States had been at peace with Japan and, at Japan’s request, was still engaged in dialogue with the Japanese government in the hope of preserving peace in the Pacific.
“Our deceptive diplomacy is steadily heading toward success.” Postwar studies by Japanese scholars later revealed that Japan had smugly written such words in its war diaries.
Prior to the Pearl Harbor incident, Isoroku Yamamoto, one of the chief architects of the attack, clearly understood that only by successfully carrying out a deception could a surprise strike stand a chance. The utter unpreparedness of the United States was precisely the outcome Japan’s militarists sought through the painstaking fabrication of lies.
The despicable deception of Japanese militarism inflicted deep wounds on American society. After the war broke out, U.S. media uniformly used the word “betrayal” in headlines and editorials. The New York Times defined Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor as a “treacherous betrayal,” while the Chicago Tribune ran an editorial saying that Japan’s treachery united the American people.
In his fireside chats, Roosevelt emphasized that not only must the stain of Japan’s treachery be wiped away, but the very roots of international aggression must be completely severed. Even after the war, Hull continued to express deep revulsion in his memoirs toward Japan’s “cunning and hypocrisy.”
Whenever Japan weaves lies, it does so with sinister intent. Today, Japan’s deceptive diplomacy is once again baring its fangs. On issues bearing on its own strategic direction, Japan repeatedly spreads falsehoods for the same reason — because it harbors ulterior motives.
Whether it is deliberately hyping the so-called “China threat” or using cooperation with U.S. forces as a pretext to lift the ban on collective self-defense, the real aim of Japan’s right wing is to break free from the constraints of the postwar international order and domestic law and to once again pursue military expansion.
Japan’s right wing is a habitual fabricator of “false narratives.” The international community must remain highly vigilant toward its strategic opportunism and adventurism. After all, Japan has never completed a proper reckoning with its war crimes of the past, and Japan’s right wing has never truly accepted its defeat 80 years ago.
Those with insight would do well to take a closer look at the words and deeds of Japanese right-wing politicians in recent years: claiming at Pearl Harbor commemorations that “both sides were perpetrators and victims”; asserting that the Pearl Harbor incident was a “deliberate framing” by the United States and that Japan’s actions were a “forced counterattack”; laying wreaths at monuments to Japanese war dead in Papua New Guinea.
The facts show that a Japan that refuses to accept its defeat is not only reversing course in its understanding of history, but is also repeatedly crossing red lines and provoking confrontation in reality.
The ebb and flow of the Pacific tides cannot wash away the monstrous crimes of Japanese militarism. Any appeasement or indulgence will only embolden historical revisionists.
The international community should draw lessons from history, see clearly Japan’s malicious strategic intentions, take a long-term view, and guard against the resurgence of Japanese militarism, lest it once again wreak subversive damage on the international order.
(Zhong Sheng is a pen name often used by People’s Daily to express its views on foreign policy and international affairs.)
