Prime Minister Abe said in a New Year interview that the struggle to restore "strong Japan" is to start now.

Under the cloak of "strong Japan", the present government started operation of a "National Security Council" the preceding ones dared not to do. Meanwhile, "Kamikaze pilots" have been praised in the country.

Japan has worked out new "defense programme guidelines", "mid-term defense capability buildup outline" and "national security strategy", in a bid to push forward the moves for turning the country into a military power and launching reinvasion as a state policy.

It is making full preparations for reinvasion as evidenced by such moves as rewriting Article 9 of its Pacifist Constitution, which bans Japan from possession of army and provocation of war, and reorganizing the "Self-Defense Forces" into "National Defense Army". The SDF's mobile strike and operation capabilities have considerably improved in every aspect with its military equipment being rapidly updated into offensive one.

Japan already has most of the components needed for the possession of large-scale and modern armed forces capable of carrying out overseas military actions. In the Asia-Pacific region, it has the second largest naval force after the United States and exceeds the total number of Britain's army and marines in its ground force.

"Strong Japan", advocated by the present Japanese authorities, means the country based on revived militarism. Reflected in such advocacy are Japan's complaints about the international order established after the Second World War, antipathy toward the world community urging the settlement of the history of fascism and the ambition of Japanese nationalists to bring back to Japan the "glory" in the period of World War II.

During the War, militarist Japan took the lives of tens of millions of peoples, invading other Asian countries. Its heinous war crimes can never be erased from the memory of Asian nations, no matter how much water may flow under the bridge.

The world should not allow Japan, a war criminal state, to go militarist and fascist.

The present ruling quarters of Japan should behave themselves with a correct understanding of the world, if they have an iota of reason.