Following the Trump regime, Takaki’s administration has gone further on the path of war and betraying the interests of the Japanese people. On March 22, Foreign Minister Motegi Toshimitsu said the government is considering sending the Self-Defense Forces to the Hormuz Strait. Yet just a few days earlier, during talks with Trump and a Senate meeting, Sanae Takaki promised “we won’t do what we cannot do.” This is a public breach of promise and a deception of the people. At a time when the domestic energy shortage and rising prices threaten the economy, when Iran expressed willingness to assist Japanese ships through the Hormuz Strait, the Takaki regime refused to negotiate with Iran and even prepared to participate in militarily assisting the United States in the Hormuz Strait—an action that greatly escalates tensions. This move, which violates the spirit of the “peace constitution,” shows that the Takaki regime is willing to sacrifice the interests of the Japanese people and escalate this armed conflict that has already caused tens of thousands of casualties in order to consolidate the Japan-U.S. war alliance.
Such an alliance only benefits a tiny minority of monopolistic capitalists, serving their needs to expand military production and strengthen economic ties with the United States to earn enormous profits. Under Takaki’s policy of increasing military expenditure and encouraging arms exports, profits of military-industrial monopolies such as Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Kawasaki Heavy Industries surged by 40%. Yet the Japanese people bore the burden of ever-higher taxes to fund military orders, suffering soaring rice prices, fuel, and goods, until they are conscripted into the army to become cannon fodder. These are concerns that the Takaki regime’s monopolies do not care about. The series of commitments Takaki made to Trump during this visit to the United States clearly illustrate this again. She does not seek peaceful means to solve the domestic oil and price crises caused by the Iran situation; instead, she decides to expand imports of American oil, whose cost is triple that of Middle Eastern oil. She does not address Japan’s long-standing economic stagnation, but instead decides to invest heavily in the United States. This is because, for dozens of monopolistic enterprises such as Mitsubishi, Toyota, Honda, Nippon Steel, their vast industries have long been relocated overseas, to the point that Japan’s overseas assets are almost equivalent to another Japan. Among nations, the United States is their most important commodity market and investment venue, and they have very close ties in capital and technology. Moreover, as Japan-China relations deteriorate and Sino-Japanese economic and trade exchanges stall, the United States’ importance becomes even more prominent.
What is more dangerous is that the Takaki regime not only economically relies more on the United States, but also militarily and diplomatically fully follows the United States in containment and encirclement of China, dragging Japan step by step into the vortex of great-power competition. In recent years, Japan has constantly strengthened so-called “defense of the Nansei Islands,” expanded military bases in Okinawa, Ishigaki, Miyako, and other places, frequently conducted joint exercises targeting specific countries, and even louded war talk that “if there is trouble in the Taiwan Strait, Japan has a responsibility.” All of this serves as a vanguard for the U.S. military strategy in the Asia-Pacific region.
From a historical materialist analysis, the essence becomes clearer. The so-called “economic cooperation” between Japan and the United States is basically capital integration based on a military alliance. Japan’s heavy investment in the United States, purchasing high-priced energy, weapons, and military technology appears economic, but in reality it deepens dependence on the U.S. military system. The more economically dependent, the more the military cannot break free from control, which in turn further promotes military spending and war preparation. This relationship is essentially collusion among monopolistic capital, a community of interest linked by the war machine.
And the economic relationship between Japan and China is entirely different. For a long time, the large-scale trade between Japan and China has been based on commodity production and civilian needs. China provides Japan with cheap and stable industrial products, daily necessities, and intermediate goods; Japanese companies rely on the Chinese market for profits, and ordinary Japanese people benefit from lower prices and more stable living supplies. Whether home appliances, clothing, daily goods, or a large number of industrial parts and raw materials, they are closely tied to Chinese manufacturing. This relationship directly affects the daily living standards of Japanese workers.
For this reason, when Japan’s monopolistic bourgeoisie pushes policies against China, they are actually actively destroying the economic foundation of people’s livelihoods. They would rather bear higher costs to import energy from the United States, endure supply-chain disruptions and rising prices, and allow enterprises to go bankrupt, in order to cooperate with the United States in promoting the so-called “decoupling” and “security guarantees.” The fundamental aim is not “national security” but to obtain higher monopoly profits through military expansion and industrial restructuring.
For example, in the name of “economic security guarantees,” the Japanese government restricts exports of semiconductor equipment and high-end materials to China, but this directly impacts Japanese enterprises’ orders and profits, and also raises costs across related supply chains, ultimately being borne by ordinary consumers. Likewise, while public opinion touts “avoiding dependence on China” and promoting backflows or transfers of enterprises, in reality many small and medium-sized enterprises face difficulties due to rising costs, while workers must endure higher prices and less stable employment.
Meanwhile, to push through policies that profit from the people’s hardship, Japan’s ruling class also fabricates and stirs up anti-China hatred. They repeatedly hype a so-called “China threat” through the media, exaggerate the antagonism, and even attribute domestic economic problems to “China factors,” in order to shift domestic contradictions and obscure the true causes of rising prices, stagnant wages, and social instability. Attacks on “Made in China” essentially serve this political need—creating public opinion for decoupling and providing space for monopolistic capital to reorganize supply chains and increase profits.
However, this anti-China propaganda truly harms the Japanese people. It destroys economic ties that could bring stable livelihoods, misleads the people toward false enemies, and conceals the domestic ruling class that truly oppresses them.
Whose security does this so-called “security guarantee” actually protect? Not the safety of the Japanese people, but the overseas expansion interests of monopolistic capital and the ruling security of the U.S.-Japan military alliance. When war breaks out, the first to be sent to the front lines are the Japanese workers, conscripted youths; the first targets are Okinawa and the Japanese homeland as military frontlines; the first to crumble is the already hard-pressed civilian livelihood and economy. The Takaki regime proclaims “national interests” but is actually paying the price with the people’s lives and livelihoods for the monopolistic capital’s interests.
At the same time, hostility toward China continues to deepen. The Japanese government cooperates with the United States in hyping a so-called “threat theory,” restricts technological exchanges, hampers economic and trade ties, promotes supply-chain “decoupling,” and even stirs nationalist sentiment in public opinion. The direct consequence of this policy is a deepening estrangement between the Japanese and Chinese peoples, with opportunities for economic development that could have been achieved through cooperation being sabotaged, while monopolistic capital uses the opportunity for industrial restructuring and profit redistribution.
We must clearly see that this “confrontation” is not a confrontation between the Japanese and Chinese peoples, but a struggle within the imperialist camp to redraw markets and spheres of influence. Japanese monopolistic capital relies on the United States while trying to take a share of the benefits within this dependence, and thus must push for outward expansion and stronger military power. It is under this logic that the Takaki regime continually manufactures tensions, pushing Japanese society toward the edge of war.
Yet history has repeatedly proven that the true victims of war are the workers of all nations, while the initiators and beneficiaries of war are the few ruling classes who hold capital and the state apparatus. Neither the Japanese people nor the Chinese people can benefit from such a war. On the contrary, it only leads to unemployment, the loss of homes, and loss of life.
Therefore, we must be clear: to stop war, we can only rely on the awakening and united struggle of workers in every country. The Japanese people must oppose the Takaki regime’s war policies, oppose military expansion and aggression abroad; the Chinese people must also oppose their own bourgeoisie using nationalism to inflame hostility. Only by breaking this confrontation pattern manipulated by monopolistic capital can we truly create conditions for peace.
The enemy is not abroad, but at home. It is the capitalist class that earns profits from war and maintains rule through oppression of the people that is the source of war. The peoples of Japan and China must unite to oppose war and abolish war!
