Editor's note: Li Shuaiyu, a special commentator for CGTN, is a lecturer at the School of International Relations, Beijing Foreign Studies University. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of CGTN.

Stop people at random in Beijing or Seoul and ask whether Tokyo has ever offered a clear and adequate apology for its aggression and colonial rule in Asia. As media surveys have shown, most would say no. Japan invests heavily in public diplomacy, which makes that finding worth explaining. Why do neighboring countries that were once invaded and ravaged during World War II still harbor fear of Japan, even after the Japanese government issued an official apology like the Murayama Declaration in 1995? The short answer is that historical revisionism was never marginalized in Japanese politics or society; on the contrary, it has often gained support at the highest levels of government. 

There is a more serious problem as well, which is the subject of what follows. Japan's recent military buildup and defense policy reforms are hollowing out the strategic reassurance that Japan, as a wartime aggressor, extended to its Asian neighbors in the postwar years.

Japan's relations with its neighbors have long been a central case in the study of reconciliation between states. As Jennifer Lind argued in Sorry States, Tokyo's official acknowledgment of its aggression and colonial rule, and its apology for them, came late only after the Cold War. Before the 1980s, the government barely raised the issue in public. Yet Japan had already normalized relations with China and the Republic of Korea and begun a rapprochement.

If an apology is not a solution, then what can convey the strategic assurances needed for reconciliation? Japan's Cold War-era defense policy provides the answer, and it also explains why recent Japanese leaders, by removing those restraints one by one, are undermining the pillars that have supported Japan's relations with its Asian neighbors, posing a risk to stability in the Asia-Pacific. During the Cold War, Japan gradually built a set of self-imposed limits on armament. Beyond Article 9 of the peace constitution, which renounces the use of force, these limits were written into Diet resolutions, cabinet interpretations and defense planning documents.

First, Japan's first Defense White Paper, published in 1970, set out for the first time what the Self-Defense Forces could do: Use force only after an armed attack; hold no strategic offensive weapons that could threaten other states; send no combat units abroad; and confine defense to Japanese territory. This was paired with thes government's interpretation that Japan would not exercise the right of collective self-defense.

Second, on nuclear weapons, then Prime Minister Eisaku Sato announced the Three Non-Nuclear Principles in 1967, which a House of Representatives resolution confirmed in 1971.

Third, alongside the 1976 National Defense Program Outline, the Miki cabinet decided that annual defense spending should not exceed 1% of gross national product (GNP) for the time being. The ceiling was formally abandoned in 1987, before the Cold War had ended, though actual spending stayed near that level for years afterward.

Fourth, Japan established the principle of civilian control over the uniformed services, an important postwar institutional arrangement intended to prevent any repeat of military expansion and the rise of militarism.

Japan sat on the front line of the Cold War and, after its economic take-off, had the resources to rearm itself. To a significant degree, it chose not to. That restraint signaled a commitment to the postwar order. So even without a full apology from the government at that time, Japan's defense policy gave its neighbors a credible commitment, and laid the basis for an initial rapprochement with China and South Korea.

Both pillars are now giving way at the same time. Historical revisionism remains active in government and in society, while Japan's leaders remove the restraints on rearmament one by one. Japan's leaders are stripping away both forms of strategic reassurance: the apology that was never fully made, and the defensive posture that once stood in its place. Together these developments are shaking the foundations of Japan's postwar relations with its Asian neighbors. 

On history issues, the familiar provocations over textbooks and the Yasukuni Shrine are not the only cause for concern. More telling is a newer practice: treating selective apology as statecraft, using it to serve foreign policy goals and to blur Japan's identity as an aggressor and a defeated power in the Second World War.

On armament and defense policy, Japan's leaders have turned Cold War norms into empty words, clearing the way for expansion. Collective self-defense has been unlocked. Military spending has risen quickly. Development of strategic weapons systems has accelerated. Arms export controls have been loosened. Within the defense establishment, uniformed officers have gained influence and visibility as the ministry's civilian officials have lost it. On this path, it is increasingly difficult to see where the limits of Japan's buildup will lie. When historical revisionism already shapes how neighboring countries assess the threat Japan poses, the accelerating growth of the Self-Defense Forces becomes a key signal of an intention to change the regional security order. That will inevitably bring problems to Japan's relations with its neighbors.

Taken together, these developments are not something China can afford to watch passively. But in the country that was the first to resist Japanese aggression during World War II, the first task is to remember its own war with Japan.

As another anniversary of the victory of the Chinese People's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War arrives, Chinese people can go, as ordinary citizens, to the Lugou Bridge at Wanping, to the Martyrs' Shrine at Nanyue, and to Shinao Hill in Yangquan, where we can pay our respects to the fallen, and let them know what the country they died for has become. Remembering on our own terms, in our own places, is where resistance to Japan's historical revisionism begins.

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