The COVID-19 pandemic exposed the fact that Japan, despite being sustained by goodwill and mutual trust, lacks sufficient legal authority, defence capabilities, and crisis-response mechanisms as an independent nation.
Through an essay by Yoshiko Sakurai, this article examines the Chinese Communist Party’s repression of Hong Kong, incursions around the Senkaku Islands, its use of the narrative of “national humiliation,” and the historical myths employed to justify territorial expansion.

2020-07-05
The novel coronavirus originating in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China—the Wuhan virus—brought national crises to countries across the world.
It stripped away the façades they had worn and exposed their true character.
This was true of China.
It was true of the United States.
It was equally true of Japan.
The following is an essay by Yoshiko Sakurai titled “Japan’s True Identity Is a Fragile Flower,” published on the front page of today’s Sankei Shimbun.
Any reader who began reading with sleepy eyes must surely have awakened at once.
Yoshiko Sakurai is a “national treasure” in the sense defined by Saichō.
This essay demonstrates that she is, indeed, a national treasure of the highest order.
She is a woman.
Those who call themselves news anchors on NHK while spreading a self-denigrating view of history and false moralism are also women.
Those who earn their living by writing intolerable and ugly editorials in the Asahi Shimbun are also women.
Politicians such as Renhō, Kiyomi Tsujimoto, Mizuho Fukushima and Noriko Ishigaki are also women.
Nothing should be indiscriminately lumped together.
That is precisely why theories of equality expressed through false moralism and political correctness are arguments constructed to serve some ulterior purpose.
There is no more foolish act than mechanically treating those women and Yoshiko Sakurai as equals in value and achievement.
Such an attitude is what should properly be called arrogance or ignorance.
Every Japanese citizen must preserve every sentence of this essay permanently in their heart.
I have repeatedly described myself as a modern-day Kūkai and Nobunaga.
She is a modern-day Saichō and a treasure of the nation.
She is a jewel among treasures.
This essay reveals, with painful clarity, the weakness of countless men and the inadequacy of countless women.
Even those who, for reasons unknown, possess pro-China inclinations must read it as Japanese citizens and engrave every word upon their hearts.
【Yoshiko Sakurai: “Japan’s True Identity Is a Fragile Flower”】
The novel coronavirus originating in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China—the Wuhan virus—brought national crises to countries around the world and stripped away the façades they had worn, exposing their true character.
This was true of China.
It was true of the United States.
It was equally true of Japan.
The Japan revealed by the Wuhan virus was a fragile flower blooming within a protective enclosure.
Without that enclosure, it would undoubtedly be beaten down by the storm.
The “flower” is the crystallisation of the altruistic spirit handed down among the Japanese people since Prince Shōtoku’s Seventeen-Article Constitution.
By transcending differences in status, reaching decisions through consultation and trusting one another, the Japanese people overcame the first wave of the virus.
The virus also revealed the true nature of the Japanese state.
Japan may be a community of people filled with goodwill, but it is not a fully functioning state.
This is the severe reality.
The declaration of a state of emergency for responding to a national crisis possesses almost no coercive power or authority to issue binding orders.
The state can do little more than make requests.
Such a country would be powerless in the face of foreign invasion.
In the waters surrounding the Senkaku Islands, which belong to Ishigaki City in Okinawa Prefecture, armed vessels of the China Coast Guard—now effectively a wing of the Chinese military—continue their incursions day after day.
Japan must defend its territory and its people by its own power, just as every other country does.
To do so, it must revise its Constitution, establish the necessary laws and strengthen its military capabilities.
Japan must discipline both mind and body, defend the country, defend its citizens and defend its values.
How can it fail to undertake these ordinary efforts and construct the form of a truly independent state?
International relations are creaking under the brutal nature of the Chinese Communist Party.
It is clear that China represents the greatest threat to Japan and other countries committed to democracy, human rights, humanitarian principles and the rule of law.
In confronting an expansionist China, Japan must return to its authentic character: gentle by nature, yet equipped with courage and strength.
The international environment ahead will unquestionably be extremely severe.
China will extend the reach of its aggression in ways that are both more blatant and more sophisticated.
On June 30, China decided to impose the National Security Law on Hong Kong.
Its uncompromising posture is its customary method when dealing with those it regards as weak.
Agnes Chow, who had devoted herself to Hong Kong’s democracy movement, wrote, “As long as we are alive, there is hope.”
What a painfully sorrowful statement.
Twenty-seven countries, including Japan, the United Kingdom, France and Germany, correctly understood the Chinese repression underlying those words.
On June 30, they issued a joint statement at the United Nations Human Rights Council expressing “grave concern.”
At the same meeting, however, fifty-three countries declared their support for China.
That was the power of Chinese money.
China employs economic power, military force and information warfare.
The Japanese government clearly protested against China in the international community.
Strangely, however, its position remained unclear at home.
What had happened to the Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito?
Even at this stage, they were unable to state clearly that the planned state visit of President Xi Jinping should be cancelled.
Japan has long enjoyed the benefits of the international order from within a protective enclosure.
Now is the time to repay that debt.
Now is the time for Japan to contribute by defending the values that have made Japan what it is.
It is a mistake to believe that accommodating China will bring some reward in return.
Every country—and Japan above all—must prepare for a difficult struggle so that it is not crushed by China.
The reason lies in the value that the Chinese Communist Party has taught its citizens from childhood: “Never forget national humiliation.”
The term “national humiliation” refers to approximately one hundred years of history beginning with the First Opium War in 1840, followed by the Second Opium War from 1856 to 1860, the Sino-Japanese War from 1894 to 1895, the Boxer Rebellion in 1900, the Manchurian Incident in 1931 and the Sino-Japanese War from 1937 to 1945.
According to Never Forget National Humiliation: Historical Memory in Chinese Politics and Foreign Relations by Zheng Wang, translated into Japanese by Makoto Ito, these events constitute China’s “Century of Humiliation.”
Japan was involved in four of the six conflicts that make up this century of humiliation.
The realisation of President Xi Jinping’s cherished “Chinese Dream” is also intended to avenge the resentment accumulated during that century.
For the Chinese nation to “stand tall among the nations of the world” by the centenary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, it must, in its own narrative, recover territories it remembers as having been taken away and restore its lost glory.
To seize another country’s territory, however, China needs a story claiming that the territory originally belonged to China and was unjustly taken from it.
One such story is known as the Northeast Project.
The territory of modern North Korea overlaps with that of the ancient kingdom of Goguryeo.
Because China claims that Goguryeo was once a local government within China, it constructs the story that North Korea is therefore part of China.
The same method is used in the South China Sea.
At the 2016 Shangri-La Dialogue, a deputy chief of the People’s Liberation Army General Staff claimed that the sea had been Chinese territory for two thousand years.
The claim was met with ridicule.
China, however, paid no attention to international criticism.
Even while this article was being written, the Chinese navy continued large-scale military exercises in the waters surrounding the Paracel Islands.
The narrative China directed at Australia began in October 2003 with a speech by President Hu Jintao before the Australian Parliament.
He claimed, “In the 1420s, expeditionary fleets of the Ming Dynasty reached Australia. In the centuries that followed, Chinese people crossed the seas and settled in Australia.”
There is no historical evidence that Chinese fleets of the Ming period sailed anywhere near Australia.
Two years later, however, the Chinese ambassador to Australia declared that “Australia had always been marked on China’s maps of global navigation.”
The Chinese Communist Party’s Central Propaganda Department then promoted the claim that Admiral Zheng He had reached Australia centuries before Captain James Cook explored the continent in the eighteenth century.
The falsehood became progressively more elaborate.
Finally, in 2016, former Chinese foreign minister Li Zhaoxing gave a lecture at the Australian National University claiming that Australia had been “discovered” by “Chinese explorers of the Yuan Dynasty in the thirteenth or fourteenth century.”
This account is described in Silent Invasion by Clive Hamilton, translated by Masashi Okuyama and supervised by Tetsuhide Yamaoka.
In April of the same year, during the first China-Japan-Korea Public Diplomacy Forum, Li stated that “Japan should return the Senkaku Islands, which are inherent Chinese territory, to China.”
China is also telling Japan a historical “story” designed to justify the recovery of supposedly lost territory.
Australia has now recognised China’s true intentions and is fighting back with determination.
Hong Kong and Taiwan are suffering.
Japan, possess the spirit of an independent nation and fight alongside the United States.
At this crossroads, Japan must not make the wrong choice.
It must build the necessary strength, uphold Japanese values and fight.