The increasing conflict between China and Japan over the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands in the East China Sea has Japan's nationalist leaders pushing strongly to change their constitution to allow full-scale rearmament of the country.
Article Nine of the Japanese constitution, written mostly by the United States after World War II, prohibits Japan from having a standing army. Today Japan is totally dependent on the US for protection from foreign aggression. Recent international events have shown the US to be weak and unable to resolve matters around the world. Given the circumstances of China's rising military and a nuclear-armed North Korea, Japan doesn't think one nuclear-powered aircraft carrier and fifty thousand US troops stationed there are sufficient.
This is also the perfect excuse for the US to help rearm Japan and to consolidate a strong ally in a region. It will be a big step by the US in its strategy of pivoting to Asia to contain China's fast rise to world power. US rulers hope that a re-armed Japan will help stop the threat that China represents to the US as the once-dominant world power.
Members of the US ruling class have expressed concerns that rearmament of Japan could destabilize the region and fears that other countries in the area will follow Japan's actions. But at the same time the US needs Japan to build a strong military to be ready in the event of a US-China confrontation.
The new nationalist Prime Minister Shinzo Abe is wasting no time and is not going to wait for US approval. On May 30, 2013 Japan's council of national defense approved a draft for fullscale rearmament. It will also change the name of the JSDF (Japan Self-Defense Forces) into the Army of National Defense.
Prime Minister Abe needs two-thirds of Parliament for approval, but he faces strong opposition within Japan's population. He is trying to counter this resistance by building nationalist pride against China among Japanese workers and the rest of the population. This is a move used by capitalist-imperialist bosses around the world to pit workers against each other.
Japanese opponents of rearmament mainly come from a strong pacifist tradition that emerged there after World War II. They need to understand that Japan's strategic location will make it impossible to avoid involvement in a US-China confrontation. The only alternative to fighting the bosses' wars for them is to join with workers in all countries in a revolutionary fight for communism.
Japan already has a large military although it does not presently function as a regular imperialist force that intervenes or invades other countries, as it did before World War II. It plans to create a branch similar to the US Marines in addition to its Army, Air Force and Navy.
Japan's military has almost 250,000 active service personnel, 60,000 reservists and over one million youth reaching military age annually. Many of these military personnel and youth must join with workers to help mobilize the masses for communism, the only way to end imperialist wars forever.
On August 6, 2013 Japan launched the aircraft carrier IZUMO, the largest warship built entirely in the country since the end of World War ll. Another carrier, to be launched in 2016, will further strengthen Japan's naval power in the region. Japan's nuclear policy calls for the restart of a nuclear plant that will produce up to nine tons of weapons-grade plutonium every year, enough to make 2000 nuclear warheads.
Japanese defense spending will increase over the next five years to 23.97 trillion yen ($232 billion US). This will give Japan the fifth-largest military budget. It plans to add drones, stealth aircraft, submarines and Osprey helicopters to its existing arsenal. The Japanese working class will have to pay through higher taxes and reduced social services and, worst, giving up their lives in the imperialist bosses' wars.
Whether Abe and the Japanese bosses dream of reviving imperial Japan or just want to protect themselves from China, one thing is very clear: the fight among imperialists always and inevitably leads to world war.
Workers in Japan, China, and worldwide have more in common with each other than with their greedy exploitative bosses. We should not wait for the imperialists to start World War III so they can send us to die for their interest and profits. Workers around the world need and deserve the better life we can build when we destroy the bosses' imperialist system and build a communist society where no bosses and no profits will exist.
We should start organizing workers and soldiers now to get rid of the bosses and their imperialist system once and for all.