Column: From Nobusuke Kishi to Shinzo Abe to Sanae Takaichi: How Japanese militarism is staging a comeback

by Wen Wu

AN INCOMPLETE RECKONING

The failure to thoroughly reckon with Japan's wartime crimes after World War II (WWII) has left militarism dormant, only to erupt some day in the future if going unchecked.

Although Emperor Hirohito's "Imperial Rescript on the Termination of the War," issued on Aug. 15, 1945, effectively acknowledged Japan's military defeat, it deliberately avoided terms such as "surrender" and "defeat," opting instead for the phrase "termination of the war." The document glorified Japan's aggression as a noble endeavor "to ensure the Empire's self-preservation and the stability of East Asia" and "for the liberation of Asia." While expressing "regret" toward its former allies and lamenting the fallen Japanese soldiers with "grief that rends the heart," it offered no apology whatsoever to the people of Asia who suffered immensely during the war. It condemned the atomic bombings as "taking the toll of many innocent lives," yet conveniently ignored Japan's prior acts of aggression.

Even more tellingly, when Prime Minister Kantaro Suzuki's cabinet resigned shortly after the surrender announcement, its stated reason was not Japan's defeat, but rather that it had "troubled His Majesty twice to issue sacred judgments" regarding ending the war. Japan failed to conduct a comprehensive reckoning not only with those who initiated the war, but also with the militarist ideology and culture and institutional structures that enabled it.

Shortly after WWII, with the descent of the Iron Curtain, Japan was swiftly integrated into the Western bloc and rearmed before it could complete its demilitarization and de-fascistization. In an effort to remove wartime right-wing elements from its postwar political ecosystem, Japan initially carried out a discipline campaign targeting war criminals, former military officers, leaders of right-wing forces, and executives of enterprises and institutions linked to the wartime regime. However, by the end of 1951, of the 210,000 individuals subjected to this campaign, over 200,000 had been exempted from penalties or reinstated. As a result, postwar Japan inherited much of its prewar political structure. Numerous unrepentant militarists evaded accountability for their war crimes, and returned to positions of influence in politics, the military, and business.

Nowhere is this lack of thorough reckoning more evident than in the case of Nobusuke Kishi, a suspected Class-A war criminal.

Kishi served in Japan's puppet state in China's northeast from 1936. He held key positions such as vice minister of industry and deputy chief cabinet secretary and controlled the region's economy on behalf of the imperial aggressors. In October 1942, he became minister of commerce and industry in Class-A war criminal Hideki Tojo's cabinet, and later served as state minister and vice minister of munitions. He was elected to the Diet in 1942 with support from the fascist "Imperial Rule Assistance Association." In September 1945, Kishi was arrested as a Class-A war crimes suspect for the crimes he committed and was imprisoned for three years at Sugamo Prison. He narrowly escaped prosecution due to his earlier disagreements with Tojo over the Battle of Saipan. He was released by U.S. occupation authorities in December 1948, but remained a target of the discipline campaign. After the campaign ended due to the outbreak of the Cold War and policy shifts in Washington, Kishi reentered politics and eventually became prime minister in 1957.

After coming to power, Kishi put forward a series of policies that ran counter to the trend of history, quickly turning Japan's political atmosphere toward the right. On Aug. 7, 1987, Kishi passed away. In their obituaries, Japanese media recapped the three periods of his life: first as a war criminal steeped in militarist ideology, then as the figure uniting Japan's conservative forces after the war, and finally as the architect of the revised U.S.-Japan Security Treaty and the most ardent advocate of the U.S.-Japan alliance.

HISTORICAL DENIAL GAINS GROUND

From the 1960s through the 1980s, Japan experienced rapid economic growth and solidified its status as an economic powerhouse, and with this came a growing desire among its leadership to break free from the constraints of the postwar order. This fueled a societal trend of looking for "success factors" in Japan's imperial past, leading to an indiscriminate glorification of traditional culture and history. Such sentiments gradually morphed into a dangerous revisionism that challenged the legitimacy of the postwar international order and denied Japan's colonial and militarist crimes.

By the mid-1980s, the Japanese government began calling for a "final settlement of postwar politics." Right-wing groups such as the Shinto Political League, Association to Protect Japan, National Conference to Protect Japan, and Alliance of Local Assembly Members of Nippon Kaigi emerged, promoting the rejection of what they derided as a "masochistic view of history" and pushing for official visits to the Yasukuni Shrine where convicted Class-A war criminals are enshrined.

At the beginning of the 21st century, conservative forces redoubled efforts to reshape the national perception of history and break free from the postwar system under the slogan of transforming Japan into a "normal country." Between 2001 and 2006, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visited the Yasukuni Shrine six times. When Shinzo Abe first became prime minister in 2006, he pushed for reinterpretations of the constitution and lifting the ban on collective self-defense, and elevated the Defense Agency to full ministry status. After his second term started in 2012, Abe himself visited the Yasukuni Shrine, and revised the decades-old Three Principles on Arms Exports to allow the exports of weapons and technology. He forced legislation through the Diet permitting the exercise of collective self-defense under so-called "survival-threatening situations," a fundamental breach of Japan's long-standing "exclusively defense-oriented policy."

In August 2015, right before the 70th anniversary of Japan's surrender, Abe delivered the so-called "Abe Statement," unilaterally declaring an end to Japan's "endless apologies" to China, the Republic of Korea, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and other victim nations. This was a clear attempt to downplay, if not outright evade, Japan's war crimes by making a clean break from its past. After leaving office, he went even further to openly claim that "a Taiwan contingency is a contingency for Japan."

It is worth noting that Abe was Nobusuke Kishi's grandson. Observers widely agree that Abe inherited his grandfather's political DNA -- a fact Abe himself acknowledged repeatedly. He stated explicitly in his memoir, "My political DNA comes primarily from Nobusuke Kishi."

Since then, successive Japanese leaders have either visited the Yasukuni Shrine directly or sent offerings and ritual sakaki branches to this symbol of Japan's war history. They have consistently highlighted Japan's identity as a "victim" of the atomic bombings while understating its role as an aggressor to win international sympathy. Meanwhile, defense spending continues to rise year by year, fueling a rapid military buildup, and right-wing groups have been revising school textbooks to negate and even glorify wartime atrocities. These actions reflect a disturbing pattern: Japan's leadership sees its wartime responsibilities with indifference or active evasion, thus providing fertile ground for the resurgence of militarism.

MILITARISM BECOMES A PRESENT-DAY THREAT

In October 2025, Sanae Takaichi became Japan's prime minister. With a close connection to Shinzo Abe, Takaichi draws her core support from the Abe faction, also known as the Seiwa Policy Research Council, the largest and most influential group within Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP). Known for its strong nationalist and conservative agenda, its push for constitutional revision and hard-line stance toward China, this faction has long sought to transform Japan into a "normal" military power.

In the Abe government, Takaichi held key posts including minister in charge of administrative reform, LDP policy chief, and minister of internal affairs. She sees herself as the faithful heir to Abe's legacy, a perception reinforced when she was photographed early this year holding the late prime minister's portrait during a visit to Ise Grand Shrine. Yet compared to Abe, Takaichi has proven far more aggressive and reckless in pursuing Japan's "normalization" and even militarization.

Politically, Takaichi has brazenly defied international law and challenged the post-WWII order. On Nov. 7, 2025, during a Diet session, she openly linked a "Taiwan contingency" to Japan's "survival-threatening crisis," hinting at a military intervention in the Taiwan Strait. This marked the first time since 1945 that a sitting Japanese leader had issued an overt threat of force against a WWII Allied victor.

Takaichi has also declared revising Article 9 of Japan's Peace Constitution, a provision renouncing war and the maintenance of armed forces, as a central goal of her government. She aims not only to delete the clause but also to insert an "emergency powers" provision, paving the way for turning the Japan Self-Defense Forces (JSDF) into a formal military organization.

Militarily, her government justifies Japan's remilitarization in the name of "responding to threats." By relentlessly amplifying narratives of "China threat," "DPRK missile risks," "migrant invasions" and an "encirclement" of Japan, her government has dramatically accelerated rearmament. In 2025, Japan raised its defense budget to 2 percent of GDP ahead of schedule, and the 2026 defense budget sets a new record and marks the 14th consecutive annual increase.

The Takaichi cabinet is also preparing to revise the three security documents to loosen arms export restrictions, potentially enabling large-scale exports of lethal weapons. Senior officials in the Prime Minister's Office have even suggested that Japan should acquire nuclear weapons, while Takaichi herself alluded to the possibility of introducing nuclear-powered submarines, which would be an unprecedented leap in Japan's military posture.

Ideologically, Takaichi clings to a distorted view of WWII history. In the lead-up to and during the war, Japanese militarists used the Imperial Rescript on Education to indoctrinate citizens, instilling the belief that they should "rush to the battlefield and willingly sacrifice their lives for the Emperor." Takaichi read this document thoroughly from childhood and once publicly praised it as "extremely inspiring."

After joining Abe's cabinet in 2006, she has made many visits to the Yasukuni Shrine, repeatedly denied in public the Nanjing Massacre and the forced recruitment of comfort women, and aggressively advocated constitutional revision to rename the JSDF as the "National Defense Army" and grant Japan the right to declare war. Alarmingly, Takaichi was once photographed standing beside the leader of a neo-Nazi group in front of the Japanese flag, and even wrote a preface for a book glorifying Adolf Hitler.

It is clear that Takaichi's reckless remarks on Taiwan are not isolated incidents but part of a dangerous pattern. Within just three months of her term, Japan's rightward strategic drift has sharply accelerated, and the country has moved substantively toward remilitarization. The revival of militarism has become a real and present danger.

The lessons of WWII remain fresh in our memory. Asian nations and the Japanese people themselves, who suffered tremendously during the war, must remain vigilant against the dangerous moves of the Takaichi government and Japan's resurgent right-wing forces. We must stand united to prevent history from repeating past tragedies, uphold the postwar international order, and safeguard the hard-won peace and stability of our shared Asian home.

Editor's note: The author is a commentator on international affairs.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Xinhua News Agency.