Andy's Analysis

 1|---
 2|title: "Hiroshima and Nagasaki's Yesterday May Yet Become Japan's Tomorrow"
 3|date: 2026-08-10
 4|cover: "/images/posts/japanese-militarism/postwar-shadow-cover.jpg"
 5|categories: ["Japanese Militarism", "Postwar Reflection"]
 6|tags: ["Hiroshima", "Nagasaki", "Militarism Revival", "Constitutional Amendment", "Defense Spending", "Taiwan Issue", "Yasukuni Shrine", "US-Japan Alliance"]
 7|description: "The mushroom clouds of August 6 and 9, 1945 were the ultimate price of Japanese militarism. For eighty years, Japan has bought its security through the Peace Constitution and the US-Japan alliance. But today, constitutional amendment pushes, exploding defense budgets, weapons export liberalization, denial of wartime aggression, and entanglement with the Taiwan issue are no longer isolated signals — they are structural warning signs. Continuing from 'The Judgment of History: The Necessity of Hiroshima and Nagasaki,' this article asks from the other side of that 'price': might yesterday come again?"
 8|translationKey: "japan-militarism-return-2026"
 9|---
10|
11|# Hiroshima and Nagasaki's Yesterday May Yet Become Japan's Tomorrow
12|
13|Eighty years.
14|
15|At 8:15 AM on August 6, 1945, "Little Boy" detonated 600 meters above Hiroshima. On August 9, "Fat Man" fell on Nagasaki. Two cities were reduced to ash in an instant; roughly 200,000 civilians perished in the blasts and their aftermath. These remain the only combat uses of nuclear weapons in human history — and the ultimate bill that Japanese militarism ran up against itself, against Asia, and against the entire world.
16|
17|Earlier in this series, I wrote "The Judgment of History: The Necessity of Hiroshima and Nagasaki," arguing from a decision-making perspective that dropping the bomb was, at the time, the lesser of two evils. That article's conclusion was that the atomic bombing forced Japan's surrender within two weeks, ending a war that might otherwise have ground on for years at a cost of millions, perhaps tens of millions of lives on a mainland decisive battle.
18|
19|But that article carried an unspoken assumption —
20|
21|**That Japan would learn from that price, and never again walk the militarist road.**
22|
23|Eighty years on, does that assumption still hold?
24|
25|This article picks up from that supplement and asks the other side of the question: if the structural conditions of Japanese militarism are accumulating again, might "yesterday" — in some new form — become Japan's "tomorrow"?
26|
27|The answer is not reassuring.
28|
29|---
30|
31|## I. Eighty Years of the Peace Constitution: From "Imposed Peace" to "Eroded Peace"
32|
33|### A constitution planted from above by an occupying army
34|
35|The Constitution of Japan, which took effect on May 3, 1947, declares in Article 9:
36|
37|> "Aspiring sincerely to an international peace based on justice and order, the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes. To this end, land, sea, and air forces, as well as other war potential, will never be maintained. The right of belligerency of the state will not be recognized."
38|
39|This constitution was drafted under the direction of the American occupation authorities and passed by the Japanese Diet. Its "top-down" character has long been the first target of Japanese right-wing attacks: "The Peace Constitution was imposed by MacArthur — it was not Japan's own choice." In the amendment camp's hands, this narrative is the first brick in dismantling Article 9.
40|
41|But here is a fact deliberately ignored: the Peace Constitution had to be "imposed from above" precisely because **Japanese militarism could never be constrained from within.** Under the Meiji Constitution, Japan walked step by step toward total war from the Mukden Incident of 1931 to defeat in 1945 — fourteen years — and no internal force could stop it. Without external occupation, Article 9 would never have come into being.
42|
43|In other words, "the Peace Constitution was imposed by an outside power" is itself the evidence that Japanese militarism had spun completely out of control — not a justification for abandoning it.
44|
45|### The Abe line: from "the constitution is unconstitutional" to "the Self-Defense Forces are constitutional"
46|
47|Shinzo Abe was the most systematic post-war Japanese politician pushing constitutional amendment. After his assassination, his political legacy did not vanish — it has been carried forward by successors including Kishida Fumio and Ishiba Shigeru.
48|
49|The Abe line's core strategy was "amendment through interpretation, not text" — since formal amendment requires two-thirds majorities in both houses plus a national referendum majority, the costs are too high. So instead:
50|
51|- **2014**: Cabinet decision lifting the ban on collective self-defense — a literal-text break with Article 9
52|- **2015**: New security legislation passed, allowing the Self-Defense Forces to provide rear-area support to U.S. forces overseas
53|- **2022**: The Kishida cabinet decision to incorporate "counterstrike capability" (the ability to strike enemy bases) into security policy — effectively restoring a preemptive war potential
54|- **2023–2024**: Defense spending ballooned from roughly ¥5 trillion to roughly ¥11 trillion, with a plan to reach 2% of GDP by 2027
55|
56|The substance of this sequence is **hollowing out Article 9 without changing its text.** "Will not maintain war potential" becomes "will not maintain offensive war potential." "Will not recognize the right of belligerency" becomes "does not preclude exercising the right of belligerency when threatened."
57|
58|Japanese constitutional scholar Kimura Sota has warned: "If all these policies are executed, Article 9 will be left with nothing but its words — it has already been substantively abandoned."
59|
60|---
61|
62|## II. Historical Revisionism: From "Forced Into the War" to "There Was No Aggression"
63|
64|### Yasukuni Shrine: the institutional humiliation of enshrinement for Class-A war criminals
65|
66|Yasukuni Shrine enshrines 14 Class-A war criminals — including Tojo Hideki, Matsui Iwane (the Class-A war criminal of the Nanjing Massacre), and Doihara Kenji. After these war criminals were secretly co-enshrined in 1978, every subsequent prime ministerial visit in an official capacity has constituted a substantive repudiation of the judgment of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East.
67|
68|This is not a question of "cultural tradition," nor of "domestic politics." The IMTFE judgment is an international law instrument. Enshrining war criminals as "martyrs" declares, at the institutional level, that those judgments will not be recognized under international law.
69|
70|Abe's December 26, 2013 visit to Yasukuni drew strong protests from China, Korea, and the United States. The international response was not "interference in internal affairs" — it was legitimate concern over an international-law debt that has yet to be settled.
71|
72|### Textbooks: the systematic laundering from "advance" to "comfort women were voluntary"
73|
74|Japan's Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology certifies history textbooks annually. Recent revisions in multiple textbooks have included:
75|
76|- Replacing "aggression" (侵略) with "advance" (進出) or "entry" (進入)
77|- Reducing "Nanjing Massacre" to "Nanjing Incident," softening casualty figures
78|- Removing or weakening coercive elements in descriptions of the "comfort women" issue
79|- Softening accounts of Unit 731's human experimentation
80|
81|The "New History Textbook" certified in 2014 was criticized by Chinese and Korean scholars as "systematically beautifying Japan's modern history."
82|
83|Historian Timothy Brook wrote in *Japan and the Imperial Legacy of 1945*: "When a state systematically rewrites its history, what it is doing is not correction — it is forgetting. Forgetting is not neutral. It is another form of war memory."
84|

III. The Taiwan Issue: Escalating “Peripheral Situations” Into “Existential Crises” for Japan

The US-Japan alliance pivots from “protecting Japan” to “protecting Taiwan”

In April 2021, a Japan-U.S. joint statement for the first time in 52 years explicitly mentioned “the importance of peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait.” In December 2022, Japan’s National Security Strategy explicitly positioned China as “an unprecedented maximum strategic challenge,” and tied the Taiwan issue to Japan’s “situations threatening survival” (存亡危機事態).

A “situation threatening survival” is one of the legal triggers that allows Japan’s Self-Defense Forces to exercise collective self-defense. Directly defining a Taiwan Strait conflict as Japan’s “existential crisis” means:

• The SDF can participate directly in a Taiwan Strait conflict
• U.S. forces can use bases in Japan proper to strike Chinese targets
• Japan has effectively abandoned the post-war principle of “exclusive self-defense”

This is not “defense.” This is tying Japan to the powder keg of the Taiwan Strait.

“A contingency in Taiwan is a contingency in Japan” — a politician’s gamble

In December 2021, former Prime Minister Abe Shinzo gave a video address at a forum in Taiwan, declaring: “A contingency in Taiwan is a contingency in Japan, and a contingency in the Japan-U.S. alliance.”

The political meaning: Japan no longer treats a Taiwan Strait conflict as “another country’s affair,” but as “our own affair” directly touching Japanese interests. This is an open abandonment of the post-war Japanese tradition of “keeping distance” on the Taiwan question.

Geopolitically, the price of this stance is extraordinarily high: the Japanese home islands become direct first-wave targets in any Taiwan conflict. From Okinawa to Kyushu to Honshu, U.S. military bases are densely distributed — and Chinese anti-access/area-denial capabilities now cover the entire First Island Chain.

Pushing Japan to the front line of the Taiwan Strait — is this “protecting Japan,” or is it turning Japan into the front line?

IV. Why “Yesterday” Could Repeat: Four Structural Signs

Pulling these threads together, the return of Japanese militarism is not a possibility — it is a structural process already underway. Four signs:

1. The revival of military expansion

Defense spending doubling in eight years; from “exclusive self-defense” to “counterstrike capability”; from “no arms exports” to “defense equipment transfers” — this is not “normal defense modernization,” but a continuous process of systematically breaching the boundaries of Article 9.

2. The normalization of historical revisionism

Enshrining war criminals as martyrs; rewriting aggression as “advance”; framing comfort women as “voluntary” — this is not “academic controversy,” but a state-level factual denial of the history of aggression.

3. The escalation of geopolitical adventurism

Defining a Taiwan Strait conflict as Japan’s “existential crisis”; lifting the ban on collective self-defense; normalizing joint operations with the U.S. military — Japan is tying itself to the most dangerous powder keg in East Asia.

4. The rightward shift of the political ecosystem

Multiple LDP factions openly advocate constitutional amendment; some politicians openly deny the Nanjing Massacre; in online discourse, “anti-China” sentiment mingles with nostalgia for the Showa era — these are signs from the political soil layer.

The four signs reinforce each other: military expansion needs historical revision to provide legitimacy (“we were not the aggressors back then, so we have the right to rearm”); historical revision needs geopolitical adventurism to provide real-world meaning (“in the face of the China threat, rearmament is necessary”); geopolitical adventurism needs political rightward shift to provide a popular base; and political rightward shift feeds on military expansion and historical revision as nourishment.

A closed loop.

Conclusion: The Price Is Not Only the Past’s

Return to August 1945.

The mushroom clouds over Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the bill that Japanese militarism ran up against itself, against Asia, against the world. The core meaning of that bill is this: the price of militarism is putting the entire nation on the betting table — and losing everything.

For eighty years, Japan’s Peace Constitution, its renunciation of belligerency, its exclusive self-defense, and the security guarantee of the US-Japan alliance together constituted the institutional arrangement of “no longer putting the nation on the betting table.” That arrangement was not free — it required Japan to restrain itself, to reflect, to refuse the old road.

What we see today is that arrangement being dismantled, piece by piece.

When the amendment camp says “the constitution was imposed by an outside power,” they forget: it was precisely because Japanese militarism spun out of control that “outside imposition” became necessary.

When the historical revision camp says “the casualty figures of the Nanjing Massacre are contested,” they evade: the fact of the Nanjing Massacre is not a numbers dispute, but the established judgment of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East.

When the defense-expansion camp says “the China threat requires us to rearm,” they evade: Japan’s security was built precisely on “not rearming.”

The “yesterday” of Hiroshima and Nagasaki is not abstract history. It is a memory of price — a reminder to Japan and to the world of what happens when militarism is followed to its end.

If Japan continues down today’s path, that memory of price will, sooner or later, become concrete again.

Not atomic bombs. Perhaps something else. But the price itself will not disappear. The militarist gambling table never lets the house win — it only bankrupts everyone who bets, the house included.

Series preview: The next installment will trace Japan’s postwar economic miracle and its “Lost Thirty Years,” analyzing how Japan moved from “economic superpower” to “fiscal cliff” — and how that predicament feeds back into the impulse to revive militarism.

References

• Abe Shinzo, Toward a Beautiful Country (美しい国へ), Bungei Shunshū, 2006.
• Kimura Sota, Constitution Article 9: Its Establishment and Interpretation, Iwanami Shinsho, 2018.
• Nishi Toshio, The Lessons of Showa, Shinchō Shinsho, 2017.
• Iokibe Makoto and Kimura Akira, eds., Postwar Japanese Diplomatic History, 3rd ed., Yuhikaku Alma, 2014.
• Timothy Brook, Japan and the Imperial Legacy of 1945, Verso, 2020.
• Sven Saaler, Pan-Asianism and Japanese Nationalism, Routledge, 2021.
• Robert D. Eldridge, The Origins of Constitutional Amendment in Japan, Japan Library, 2020.
• Cabinet Office of Japan, National Security Strategy, December 2022.
• Ministry of Defense of Japan, Defense Buildup Program, December 2022.