TOKYO, April 22 (Xinhua) -- In another step down the dangerous path of remilitarization, the Japanese government on Tuesday officially revised the "three principles on transfer of defense equipment and technology" and their implementation guidelines to allow overseas sales of weapons, including those with lethal capabilities.
The latest decision marks more than a policy adjustment. It reflects Japan's right-wing forces' long and incremental scheme to cast off the dual constraints placed on the country by the international community and its own legal framework in the aftermath of World War II, whose erosion should alarm every nation that paid in blood for Japan's defeat.
The Potsdam Declaration explicitly requires Japan to be completely disarmed and not to maintain industries that would enable it to re-arm for war, and Tokyo later reinforced those limits through its "Three Principles on Arms Exports" in 1967, culminating in a near-total ban on arms exports in 1976.
However, the hard-won framework to ensure that Japan would not again become a source of military threat has now been overturned through years of erosion.
Tokyo has, for decades, chipped away at its own constraints -- first by allowing military technology transfers to the United States, then by opening the door to joint development programs.
The 2014 changes under former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe marked a critical inflection point. By replacing the original arms export ban with the current framework, the government effectively permitted Japan to export defense equipment and technology across five non-combat categories, signaling a fundamental shift from arms exports being "prohibited in principle" to "permitted in principle."
Tuesday's revision completes that trajectory. By removing the remaining category restrictions and loosening controls on transfers to conflict zones, it crosses a line that previous governments had at least nominally upheld.
What makes the latest move especially alarming is that it is just part of Japan's wider push to recast the country as a "normal country" with expanded military capabilities.
Since Sanae Takaichi took office as prime minister, Japan has embarked on an accelerated path toward military buildup, steadily departing from its exclusively defense-oriented policy.
Recent risky steps -- sharply increasing the defense budget, restructuring the Self-Defense Forces to enhance combat capabilities, deploying long-range missiles with so-called "counterstrike capabilities," as well as relentless efforts to revise the Constitution, the "Three Non-Nuclear Principles" and the three security documents -- all point to a deliberate departure from Japan's postwar pacifist principles and an advance toward remilitarization.
At the same time, Japan has been actively forging exclusive security blocs in the region and stoking bloc confrontation. Weapons, in this sense, are far more than mere tools of defense; they are instruments of geopolitical leverage.
From stepping up defense equipment supplies to the Philippines to the joint naval vessels project with Australia, each arms deal tightens a web designed to encircle and contain, feeding regional tensions rather than mitigating them.
What makes the timing all the more suspicious is that the revisions coincided with the annual Spring Rites at the notorious Yasukuni Shrine, a symbol of Japanese militarism and wartime aggression.
Takaichi on Tuesday sent a ritual "masakaki" tree offering and made a monetary offering to the controversial shrine, which honors 14 convicted Class-A Japanese war criminals from World War II alongside the war dead.
A government that expands military power while its leader worships convicted war criminals is sending a clear message: Japan's neo-militarism is becoming a clear and present danger. It risks unsettling the hard-won stability of the Asia-Pacific and potentially pulling Japan itself into conflict.
That is why this moment demands vigilance. The region's peace should not be turned into a bargaining chip for geopolitical maneuvering, nor should bloc confrontation and military expansion be allowed to take root again.
The international community should act with resolve to prevent the tragedies of World War II from being replicated and to defend the region's enduring peace. ■