By Hu Jiping
In 1931, 90 years ago, the militarist Japan initiated the September 18th Incident, which was the prelude to its full-blown aggression against China. The incident changed the China-Japan relations and the destiny of both countries. It had a direct bearing on Japan's all-round aggression war against China and initiation of the Pacific War, its repercussions still being felt today.
After careful planning, the Japanese troops stirred up the September 18th Incident. After that, they occupied the whole northeast China, entered the Shanhai Pass, one of the northeast passes of the Great Wall, and approached Beiping (now known as Beijing). Therefore, the Lugou Bridge Incident was a continuation of the September 18th Incident, and Japan’s switch to the full-scale invasion was no accident, which aggravated its conflicts with western countries like the US and Britain and eventually led to the Pacific War. Japanese historians called the period from the September 18th Incident to Japan’s surrender the “15-year war”, and the incident was the vital starting point of Japan’s large-scale aggression and expansion all the way to the final defeat.
As we look back now, the biggest lesson Japan can learn from the September 18th Incident is perhaps that arbitrary push of its own “lifeline” to the territory of another country will take it onto the road of armed expansion from which there is no return. At a meeting jointly held by the Japanese cabinet and military in June 1927 that was focused on formulating China policy, Tokyo decided to grab the three northeastern provinces from China. Kanji Ishiwara, who schemed the incident for the Kwantung Army, claimed that Japan and the US would eventually go to war, and occupying China’s northeast as early as possible was Japan’s only way of survival. In early 1931, Japanese politician Yosuke Matsuoka blatantly claimed in the parliament that northeast China was a lifeline that concerned Japan’s life and death.
It was outrageous that a country would call a foreign territory its “condition of survival”, yet Japanese military and political circles received strong public support by hyping up the “lifeline theory”, exaggerating crisis and deceiving the citizens. That was an important reason why Japan went farther down the wrong road later.
After WWII, the General Headquarters (GHQ), to keep Japan from waging a war again, led the formulation of the Japanese Constitution that denied the country the right to keep armed forces and engage in wars. However, according to Tokyo’s ever more constitutional interpretations and a law that took effect in 2016, the country, in addition to self-defense, is now allowed to provide logistics support for American troops and indirectly engage in a war in case of a "significant event" that may evolve into a direct armed attack against Japan. It is also allowed to directly exercise force in case of a "crisis that threatens its very existence". Such interpretations and permissions have actually undercut the Constitution and left an opening for Japan to exercise force overseas.
As a result, the Abe administration met vehement questioning and objection from its people and public opinions when making relevant bills in 2015. One focal point was whether concepts like “significant event” and “crisis threatening national existence” would be interpreted in an excessively broad scope – an issue that directly related to whether Japan would be embroiled in a war.
Much as expected, the so-called “crisis threatening national existence” was taken up by Japanese politicians just a few years after the bills came into force. In March this year, Japan included the stability of Taiwan Strait in its joint statement with the US, the first time since China and Japan normalized their relations. Japanese Vice Prime Minister Taro Aso said in July that the Taiwan Strait situation might be designated as a crisis threatening Japan’s national existence, and even made the sensational claim that Okinawa will be the next target after Taiwan, urging Japan to unite with the US to defend Taiwan. The defense minister and officials from the Liberal Democratic Party aired similar voices repeatedly, the latter even holding a security dialogue with Taiwan’s Democratic Progressive Party, further challenging China’s bottom line.
If Japan were determined to interfere in the Taiwan Strait situation with force, was it because it would really bring significant impacts upon Japan’s national security and even threaten its existence, or was it just to meet its own selfish calculations? If it were the first case, how did the Taiwan Strait situation affect and threaten its existence then? If it were the second case, what interests of Japan would be affected? These are questions worth deep thinking about, especially for the Japanese people. It isn’t that long ago that Japanese politicians and military officers played the same trick on its people – rampantly expanding the “lifeline”, colluding with the media to instigate a sense of crisis among the people, and eventually bringing the country into a war that ended in its own defeat.
Taiwan is an inalienable part of China. Japan should be particularly cautious with its words and deeds on the Taiwan question given its colonial history on the island. Yet Japanese politicians are claiming that the Taiwan question is threatening their national existence and they need to “defend” it, which gives the illusion that they are still living in the pre-WWII militarist age. The world knows very well that Japan has never seriously reflected on its history of aggression and colonization after the war, and we should stay highly alert that its militarist embers may smolder and come back to life in a new form.
(The author is the vice president and researcher at China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations)
Editor's note: This article is originally published on huanqiu.com, and is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information, ideas or opinions appearing in this article do not necessarily reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.
