Japanese experts urged greater public scrutiny of the country's rising defense spending and large-scale military buildup, emphasizing the need to reflect on current and past conflicts, while noting that public awareness of the realities of war has significantly faded 80 years after the end of World War II.

Akira Yamada, a professor at Meiji University's School of Arts and Letters, stressed the importance of making war more tangible in education by encouraging younger generations to listen to the lived experiences of war survivors and the elderly.

Yamada said they need not just to hear that war is unacceptable, but also to grasp how profoundly different everyday life was.

Yamada emphasized that Japan's postwar pacifism is rooted in the memory of war and argued that it must also include reflection on its colonial past — an aspect too often neglected.

He urged the public to recognize the realities of Japan's past military expansion and the dangers posed by its path toward remilitarization.

Japanese Defense Minister Gen Nakatani said on April 15 that the country's defense spending and related costs for the 2025 fiscal year are expected to total 9.9 trillion yen ($67.8 billion), equivalent to 1.8 percent of gross domestic product — an increase of 0.2 percentage points from 2024.

The calculation was based on 2022's actual GDP, when the government updated three security and defense-related documents.

Kumiko Haba, a professor emeritus at Aoyama Gakuin University in Tokyo and former vice-president of the International Studies Association, voiced concerns over Japan's military concessions to the United States, including plans to increase its defense budget significantly.

She noted that US President Donald Trump has pushed Japan to boost its defense budget to 3 percent of GDP.

"Most Japanese citizens are critical of rising defense spending. However, the media often echo government policy rather than reflect public sentiment," said Haba.

"People often say you must prepare for war to prevent it, but Article 9 of Japan's Constitution effectively makes us a neutral country. As long as it stands, any preemptive strike against Japan would violate international law and could lead to the aggressor's isolation," said Haba.

"Japan should avoid fighting wars it can't win, which is why building mutual understanding with our neighbors is so crucial."

A rally and demonstration march organized by pro-Constitution groups took place in Tokyo on May 3 for Constitution Memorial Day, marking 78 years since Japan's postwar Constitution came into effect. The event saw an estimated 38,000 participants, organizers said.

This year also marked 80 years since the end of World War II, and attendees voiced a strong commitment to "working toward a future where the Constitution is upheld and free from war".

True guarantee

"Protecting peace and pursuing politics that do not rely on military power is the true guarantee of human rights and the very spirit of the Constitution," said Nahoko Hishiyama, a member of the rally's executive committee.

Yamada called for public vigilance over military policy, warning that critical oversight is lost if only specialists dominate the discussion.

Yoko Kato, a history professor at the University of Tokyo's Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology, criticized Japan's increasingly one-sided security policy, which she said relies too heavily on the logic of "deterrence".

She noted the Cabinet's 2022 approval of three key security-related documents as a turning point, followed by a rapid increase in defense spending.

Takakage Fujita, secretary-general of the Association for Inheriting and Propagating the Murayama Statement, a Japanese civic group dedicated to upholding the 1995 Murayama Statement that admits Japan's wartime mistakes, was critical of the country's conservative and right-wing circles. "Denying historical facts and refusing to acknowledge acts of aggression will only disgrace the country," he said.

Their dismissal of the statement as a "masochistic view of history" is fundamentally flawed, said Fujita at the 2025 China-Japan Scholars and Think Tanks Symposium in Osaka on April 25.

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