Eighty-one years ago today, Japanese Emperor Hirohito announced Japan's acceptance of the Potsdam Declaration's terms and its unconditional surrender, paving the way for the formal end of World War II in September.

During Japan's invasion of China, more than 35 million Chinese military personnel and civilians were killed or injured, according to the National Archives Administration of China.

Yet 81 years after the guns fell silent, some in Japan ignore, deny or even glorify its history of aggression.

Lyu Yaodong, a researcher at the Institute of Japanese Studies, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, said that although the war happened in the past, historical issues continue to shape the present.

Japan's historical revisionism has not only fueled tensions with neighboring Asian countries, he said, but also affected regional politics, security and economic cooperation, posing a threat to peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific.

Historical revisionism continues to fuel tensions and undermine regional trust

Japan's attempts to revise textbooks and downplay or distort its wartime aggression – including the "comfort women" system, biological warfare and human experimentation – have drawn strong opposition from countries that suffered under Japanese invasion.

Between 1931 and 1945, the Japanese military forcibly recruited over 200,000 Chinese women into sexual slavery, according to Shanghai Normal University's Research Center for Comfort Women.

In 2025, several UN special procedures mandate holders raised concerns over ultranationalist groups lobbying to remove references to Japan's wartime "comfort women" system from textbooks.

In their letter, they noted that Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) in 2021 approved five publishers' requests to delete or revise terms such as "military-accompanying comfort women" and "forceful taking away" while rejecting the term "military sexual slavery."

Japan has also sought to gloss over its history of biological warfare.

Japanese historian Masataka Mori said Unit 731 is scarcely mentioned in Japanese textbooks. "Whether young or old, most Japanese people know the name Unit 731, but they don't know what crimes it actually committed," he said.

Testimony from Kurumizawa Masakuni, a former member of Japan's Unit 731, has revealed its atrocities. Masakuni said the Japanese military established a biological warfare base in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province in northeast China, where at least 3,000 people were used as human experimental subjects between 1940 and 1945. Victims were subjected to experiments involving deadly pathogens such as plague and cholera, as well as frostbite and poison gas exposure.

Meanwhile, Japanese politicians have visited Yasukuni Shrine, a symbol of Japanese militarism and wartime aggression, which honors Class-A war criminals convicted by the postwar Tokyo Tribunal.

On Saturday, marking the 81st anniversary of Japan's unconditional surrender in World War II, Japanese Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi visited the shrine and Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi sent a ritual offering.

Such visits, Lyu said, downplay and glorify Japan's history of aggression and seriously hurt the feelings of people in Asian countries that suffered from Japanese militarism.

Historical issues not only undermine mutual trust with neighboring countries but also impede regional cooperation, Lyu added.

"If the historical issue is not properly addressed, Japan's erroneous view of history and historical revisionism will continue to undermine political trust among neighboring countries," he said. "It will directly affect regional economic cooperation. Without a resolution, it will be difficult to build a more stable framework for regional cooperation."

From textbooks to politics, revisionist narratives gain wider ground

Right-wing historical revisionism in Japan evolved from its early postwar roots, Lyu said, through gradual expansion during the Cold War, to broader dissemination after the Cold War and increasingly beyond Japan's borders.

In the early postwar period, under US occupation and reforms imposed on Japan, historical revisionism had not yet developed to the scale it would later reach.

As the Cold War began, Japan's political environment started to change. The focus on wartime responsibility gradually weakened amid shifting regional dynamics and the emerging Cold War order, Lyu said, as some former Japanese military personnel and officials from the prewar government returned to political life, bringing their historical views into the political arena.

From the 1970s onward, as Japan's economic and political influence grew, historical revisionism expanded into politics and education and increasingly shaped government policy.

It also found new channels through the internet, films and animation, reaching Japanese society and particularly younger generations. Some young Japanese have little understanding of their country's history of aggression as revisionist narratives increasingly spread overseas.

Japan's rightward shift and growing militarism have accelerated in recent years.

Lyu noted that historical revisionist forces are found not only in the ruling Liberal Democratic Party but also among political groups such as the Japan Innovation Party and Sanseito, where extreme nationalism is pronounced.

"Japan's current political environment is fueling the spread of historical revisionism," he said.

Japan's continued promotion of historical revisionism aims to reconstruct the narrative of its wartime aggression and lay the groundwork for militarization and military expansion, Lyu said.

Japan's right-wing forces increasingly link historical revisionism with remilitarization, creating a dangerous cycle in which distortions of the past justify a larger military role. The cycle not only obscures the historical record but also poses challenges to regional peace and stability.