Dragon Fire

Briefing

The historical use — or misuse — of Japanese militarism has long been a soul-searching issue for the Japanese. In 1894, Japan defeated China in a brief war and took Taiwan. Korea was annexed in 1910 and Manchuria invaded in 1931. Japanese forces swept through China in 1936 and finally attacked US forces at Pearl Harbor in 1941 — ending in the nuclear-bomb attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Japan then drew up a pacifist constitution which ‘for ever renounces war as a sovereign right’. During the Cold War, Japan flourished, living under a US security umbrella which protected it against threats from the Soviet Union. In the late nineties, however, the United States urged it to take a greater role in regional defence. Japan quietly redrew its military profile, believing that ultimately its biggest challenge would come from China, whose aim was to overtake Japan as the pre-eminent power in the region.