Japan Shouldn’t Trade Its Proven Soft Power for Militarism
Sanae Takaichi risks squandering Japan’s strategic capital
By: B A Hamzah
Count me as one of many Asians who view Japan’s plan to take up arms again and abandon its soft power, which has played an integral role in keeping the peace in the region for the last 70 years, as a bad omen. For many Asians, especially in China, South Korea, and Southeast Asia, Japan’s wartime legacy is not history but an unforgivable past that Tokyo for decades has sought to make amends for.
Just as Japan keeps alive the trauma of Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Tokyo inflicted upon their societies, the families of Japanese war victims in some parts of Southeast Asia, Nanjing and other places will continue to remind their societies of the atrocities committed by Imperial Japan, whose occupation of Southeast Asia from 1941 to 1945 caused an estimated 4.4 million civilian deaths due to famine, forced labor and ruthless repression. Economies collapsed, with GDP falling by half in most areas, as resources were seized for the war effort. Even today, there are families whose grandparents remember brutal subjugation.
A militarily resurgent Japan may be welcomed in Washington and some Western capitals, but in much of Asia, it would revive historical anxieties, intensify great-power rivalry, and undermine the delicate power balance that has allowed the region to prosper for decades. In most parts of Asia, PM Takaichi’s plan would revive a historical trauma and distrust, not reassurance…
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