By Philip Yeung
With war raging in Iran, Japan decided to poke the dragon's eye, in an act verging on open hostility against China.
On 17 April 2026, a Japan destroyer transited through the Taiwan Strait, sending out three hostile signals.
First, the Japanese destroyer J.S. Ikazuchi, capable of carrying 90 ship-to-ship missiles, sailed through the sensitive waterway for joint military exercises with the Philippines, targeting China as their presumptive enemy.
Second, the Taiwan Strait, north to south, is only 370 kilometers long. Yet, the Japanese gunboat took 14 hours to navigate it, in a "come-get-me" taunt, practically daring the Chinese military to open fire.
Third, in a move calculated to insult and humiliate China, Japan picked 17 April for this maritime intrusion, a date marking the 131st anniversary of the Treaty of Shimonoseki, when Taiwan was forcibly ceded to Japan—a day that will live forever as a national shame for China.
In diplomacy, timing is everything. Japan is sending China a loud and crystal-clear message: it still harbors nostalgic colonial ambitions over Taiwan, by rubbing salt into China's old wound.
This in-your-face insult was met with maximum restraint. Only angry words of protest were uttered. The Russians would have sent the gunboat to its watery grave. An unpunished aggressor taunting its unavenged victim is a bridge too far.
Japan is hell-bent on reshaping the established regional order, lining up alliances of convenience to encircle China.
Japan has even urged NATO to come eastward. NATO's purpose is "to keep the Americans in, the Russians out, and the Germans down." Japan wants to substitute "the Chinese" for "the Germans" and align itself with America's strategy of Containing China, to out-compete its main rival.
Quietly, in recent years, Japan has been abandoning its pacificist constitution. Its military spending has skyrocketed to 2% of its GDP. It is flirting with disowning its Three Non-Nuclear Principles, established nearly 60 years ago, whereby Japan pledges not to "possess, produce or permit" the introduction of nuclear weapons into its territory.
Japan is partnering US arms manufacturers to build a military supply chain, and has greenlighted the export of lethal weapons to other countries. A new arms race is underway, powered by former war criminals.
Takaichi is tossing out pacificism and preparing Japan for long-term military conflict with China.
This is outrageous. This murderous country, living in denial, has never apologized or paid for its wartime atrocities. While 200,000 Japanese civilians perished when atomic bombs were dropped on Nagasaki and Hiroshima, plus 100,000 dead in the aerial bombardment of Tokyo, Japan had been spared the total devastation of homeland invasion.
Next to the 35 million dead Chinese, 300,000 of whom died horrifically in the Rape of Nanking, these numbers pale in comparison. Now, Japanese imperial ghosts have returned to haunt the Pacific again.
Japan's ugly devil wartime image has been whitewashed by being a US ally. Postwar, American strategic priorities have adopted Japan as a client state. Its emperor, instead of being prosecuted as a war criminal, was welcomed, almost child-like, to Disneyland as an innocent tourist.
Taiwan is China's uncrossable red line. If you cross it, it's your funeral.
Yet, Takaichi pointedly declares that any military action over Taiwan is an existential threat to Japan. This is ridiculous. The invader is crying foul. Historically, China has never invaded this chain of islands in the earthquake zone--and never will.
Takaichi takes perverse pleasure in provoking China. Under her, Japan has become the major destabilizer in Asia, with its military capability upgraded from defensive to offensive, bristling with long-range strike power capable of reaching Shanghai.
China has not taken an inch of foreign territory in five centuries. But US propaganda falsely paints China as the Russia of the East. American allies have swallowed the lie, ganging up on a country guilty only of being an economic super-success.
Japan feels both superior and inferior to China--sore at being surpassed economically and militarily by a latecomer. It is playing with fire over Taiwan. This time, it will be taught an overdue lesson when China settles old blood debts and new miscalculations. The curse of Asia must be deep-sixed forever.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
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