Japan never underwent a thorough dismantling of militarist forces after World War II, said Lu Hao, a research fellow at the Institute of Japanese Studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Japan's push to revise its pacifist constitution and update its three national security documents by the end of 2026 has intensified concerns about a potential resurgence of "Japanese militarism," especially as Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi's remarks on China's Taiwan have drawn strong condemnation from China and attracted attention from the wider international community.

During a parliamentary hearing earlier this month, Takaichi invoked a so-called "survival-threatening situation" – a trigger created under a controversial 2015 security law, implying Tokyo could treat the issue as grounds for military involvement.

The persistence of militarist sentiment in Japan, however, has deeper roots. "Many wartime figures avoided punishment and re-entered government and the military, laying the groundwork for the later resurgence of militarist thinking," Lu noted.

Japan's postwar conservative elite retained ideological and familial ties to prewar military and expansionist networks, allowing elements of that militarist mindset to persist, Lu told China Media Group.

As Japan's economy surged in the 1970s, a revived ambition for political great-power status encouraged historical revisionism among segments of society. After the economic bubble burst in the 1990s, prolonged stagnation fueled nationalist sentiment, enabling right-wing groups to draw on memories of the imperial era as a form of psychological refuge, he added.

This unresolved legacy, Lu noted, continues to "hinder Japan's ability to achieve genuine historical reconciliation with its neighbors and occasionally steers national strategy off course." He also contended that the revival of militarist thinking runs counter to the postwar international order built on rejecting aggression and upholding peace.

Japan's ongoing reinterpretations of its pacifist constitution and its pursuit of offensive military capabilities, he argued, challenge the principles of the Cairo Declaration and the Potsdam Proclamation.

Such trends risk unsettling regional security dynamics and could become a source of future instability in the Asia-Pacific, Lu said.