Japan frays nerves of neighboring countries
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E-mail Xinhua, July 7, 2014
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[By Jiao Haiyang/China.org.cn] |
![[By Jiao Haiyang/China.org.cn]](http://images.china.cn/attachement/jpg/site1007/20140707/001ec949c22b152454ab0b.jpg "[By Jiao Haiyang/China.org.cn]")
For the Chinese people, July 7, 1937 was a day when one of their worst nightmares began, as it marked the beginning of the eight-year-long China's War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression.
During the 1930s and 1940s, the Japanese empire, where many reckless militarist policies were born, invaded China and some Southeast Asian countries, causing huge pain to Asian people.
Seventy-seven years later, the psychological wounds of the Chinese people have not been fully healed, as Japanese rightists have repeatedly denied its atrocities of the aggression and taken a provocative approach in addressing ties with its neighboring countries.
Even worse, these wounds are once again touched recently as the cabinet of Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on July 1 approved a resolution that would allow the country to exercise the so-called "collective self-defense right" by reinterpreting its pacifist Constitution, despite strong protests from home and abroad.
According to the war-renouncing Article 9 of the country's Constitution, Japan has been banned to exercise the right to collective self-defense after World War II due to its heinous war crimes to Asian countries.
However, the resolution would enable Tokyo to fight for "countries with close ties" with Japan even though Japan itself is not under attack, which signals that the Japanese government has shifted its previous restrictive postwar security policy to a more proactive one.
It is by no means the first time that the Abe's administration irritates its neighbors and stirs up regional tensions by adopting provocative policies.
In recent years, Tokyo has tried hard to strengthen its military buildup and seek military expansion amid festering historical and territorial disputes with neighboring countries, including the attempt to revise its national defense policy in late December last year.
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