Japan's rearmament drive should be kept at bay
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E-mail Xinhua, December 27, 2013
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[By Pangli/China Daily] |
![[By Pangli/China Daily]](http://images.china.cn/attachement/jpg/site1007/20131227/001ec949c22b142758cc24.jpg "[By Pangli/China Daily]")
Humanity can learn from mistakes and lessons provided by history.
Japan's rearmament pursuit incarnated in a array of controversial moves its government has taken recently demands high vigilance of the international community and should be timely contained, considering the horrible occurrences in the last century.
On Sept. 1, 1923, a deadly mega-quake jolted Japan's main island of Honshu, killing hundreds of thousands of people, including three royal family members, and leaving about 1.5 million homeless in Tokyo and Yokohama.
The devastating quake had further exacerbated anxieties for security and survival of the island nation, which has been fettered by its narrow land territory and the lack of natural resources.
These anxieties and mentality have been behind Japan's aspiration for military expansion of its Lebensraum or living space overseas.
Also in the 1920s, a hurricane of economic crisis originating from the United States crushed Japan's economy, leaving around 3 million people jobless. That as well prompted Japan to speed up its military expansion overseas to quell domestic turbulence.
A then weak and perplexed China, which was only years away from the crumble of the 2000-year-long feudal imperialist system and overwhelmed by warlords' infighting, topped Tokyo's hunting list.
In later years, a militarized fascist Japan launched one of the most sanguinary aggression in the human history into China and other countries in the Asia-Pacific region and killed tens of thousands of people before it was defeated in 1945.
After nearly a century passed since the 1923 quake, Japan was hard hit again in March 2011 by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake, which was followed by huge tsunami waves that set off a nuclear crisis.
This natural disaster came at a time when Japan was led by a ever-right tilting government and mired in a stagnated economy in the aftermath of the worst global financial meltdown since the Great Depression.
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