The recent comments by Japan’s relatively new Prime Minister Takaichi in parliament regarding Taiwan have provoked a significant and immediate reaction from China.

The prime minister stated that certain actions, particularly those involving warships and military force, could constitute a “survival threatening situation” for Japan.

PM Takaichi stated that in the case of a crisis in Taiwan

“if there are battleships and the use of force, no matter how you think about it, it could constitute a survival-threatening situation [for Japan], whichever way you look at it […]

The so-called Taiwan contingency has become so serious that we have to anticipate a worst-case scenario.”

While this story has been covered extensively in the media, a crucial piece of historical context has often been omitted in the west, that this specific phrase is the same excuse Japan used in the past to justify its invasion of China making its use indicative of a potentially dangerous path.

A Reckless Revival of Historical Rhetoric

On the eve of the September 18th Incident in 1931, the Kwantung Army falsely claimed that Japan’s national interests and survival were under grave threat from Chinese forces in Manchuria. This served to fabricate a crisis that was used to launch the invasion of Northeast China, portraying the aggression as a necessary act of self-defense.

In the years leading up to full-scale war, Japanese militarists systematically cultivated a narrative of national peril to justify expansion.

The pattern repeated in 1937 following the July 7th Incident which would rapidly escalate into the Second Sino-Japanese War, as the Japanese authorities forcibly linked their imperial ambitions with national survival.

So we can see how Japan’s consistent rhetoric of existential crisis served crucial domestic and strategic purposes for war. Basically creating a public atmosphere centered on a supposed “survival-threatening situation,” the Japanese governments sought to mobilize popular support, suppress political opposition, and whitewash clear aggression as legitimate self-preservation. The concept provided ideological cover for the escalating war against China, transforming a colonial expansionist adventure into what officials termed a sort of crusade for Japan’s future. The manipulation of public perception through survival rhetoric became a hallmark of Japanese militarism, enabling successive acts of aggression under the pretext of national security.

Many observers agree that Prime Minister Takaichi is playing with fire and does not understand the nature of the forces she is engaging with by invoking this sort of rhetoric. Her posturing is reckless and risks involving Japan in a conflict that would be very dangerous for the nation itself. This direction appears to run counter to wider popular opinion in Japan, which is understood to favor staying out of the Taiwan situation, despite a long-standing movement among the Japanese elite in a more militaristic and anti-China direction. Such provocative language could start a reaction within Japan itself and lead to political repercussions for the government.

From China’s perspective, which places great importance on historical patterns, Japan’s use of “survival threatening situation” is a major red flag. Chinese historical understanding points to multiple instances throughout history such as during the Tang and Ming dynasties where Japan attempted to reach the Asian continent, using the Korean peninsula as a launch pad to get to China. The last major attempts, which began with sustained aggression in the 1890s and continued until 1945, resulted in absolute catastrophe for Japan, even though it was launched when China was weak, poor, and politically divided.

From the Anglo-Japanese Alliance to AUKUS

Japan’s stunning victory over the Russian Empire in the 1905 Russo-Japanese War was a landmark event, achieved in large part through a strategic symbiosis with the British Empire. Prior to the conflict, Japan secured the Anglo-Japanese Alliance in 1902, a diplomatic masterstroke that provided it with crucial access to British financial markets, advanced naval technology, and intelligence. This alliance ensured that Japan could fund and build its modern fleet without direct British military involvement, most famously allowing the Japanese Navy to secure a decisive victory at the Battle of Tsushima. Critically, the alliance deterred other European powers, like France, from intervening on Russia’s side, allowing Japan to focus its entire military might on a single foe. As Britain sought to limit Russia’s presence in the region using a leading from behind strategy, so the US is using it to limit BRICS and resist the systemic transition to multipolarity. This historical lesson, that a strategic partnership with a leading Anglo-Saxon maritime power could offset a larger continental rival’s advantages and enable a smaller island nation to achieve a game-changing victory, remains a powerful memory in Japanese strategic thinking.

Today, some Japanese security strategists view the potential of joining pillars of the AUKUS pact through a similar lens. AUKUS is a security partnership between Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Asian countries, originally it was to have among its members India, but that did not work, not the anglo forces of that pact are looking to build a coalition of Asian countries to counter China, and for this the new prospective members seem to be Philippines, South Korea and Japan. AUKUS seeks to accelerate advanced capabilities like hypersonic weapons, quantum technologies, and artificial intelligence so from Tokyo’s perspective, participating in AUKUS would be the modern equivalent of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, providing access to cutting-edge technology and deepening integration with the most advanced military ecosystems of the US and UK. The belief is that by combining Japan’s own capabilities with the AUKUS technological vanguard, it could, alongside its allies, effectively contain the rise of China, replicating the historic outcome where a well-resourced partnership allowed it to overcome a seemingly larger continental power.

But the idea that Japan would revive the rhetoric of a “survival threatening situation” today is indeed very misguided. China today is the world’s manufacturing and industrial power, a leader in numerous technologies, which dwarf Japan economically and militarily. To pursue a strategy against a now far more powerful China is a dangerously irrational course that would risk Japan’s destruction.

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Miguel Santos García is a Puerto Rican writer and political analyst who mainly writes about the geopolitics of neocolonial conflicts and Hybrid Wars within the 4th Industrial Revolution, the ongoing New Cold War and the transition towards multipolarity. Visit his blog here.

Featured image is from the author

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