Is Japan bound up to battle chariot?
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E-mail Xinhua, September 19, 2015
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[By Jiao Haiyang/China.org.cn] |
No nation is more alert than China when Japan's ruling coalition was trying a final push on Friday to enact the unpopular security bills that will expand the role of the country's Self-Defense Forces (SDF).
Eerily, Sept. 18 this year marks the 84th anniversary of the invasion of northeast China by Japanese troops.
The enactment of the legislation, known in Japan as "war bills," would allow the SDF to engage in conflict overseas for the first time since WWII as well as to go into combat under certain conditions when Japan itself is not under attack.
Japan's ruling coalition might be one step closer to its dream of normalizing the nation's military orientation, but for Japanese people and neighboring nations, a nightmare scenario has never been closer.
On Sept. 18, 1931, Japanese troops used the pretext of an explosion along a Japanese-controlled railway to occupy the city of Mukden (today's Shenyang).
The incident ushered in the 14-year Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression, in which China suffered more than 35 million military and civilian casualties.
Some might argue the timing is a coincidence. However, it should be noted that Japan commissioned a large helicopter-capable navy ship in March, and named it after a warship used in the invasion of China in the early 20th century. The second vessel of the same class is named after an aircraft carrier that attacked Pearl Harbor.
Such "coincidences" evoke bitter memories of Japan's wartime atrocities, not only among Chinese but also among people in other war victim nations.
Regrettably, 70 years after the end of WWII, the wounds that Japan's militaristic ambitions inflicted upon Asian neighbors have not yet healed.
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