The essence of China’s continued attacks on Japan through historical issues lies in forcing Japan into endless apology, crushing Japanese self-respect, and trapping the nation in guilt and self-hatred.
Through issues such as comfort women statues, the textbook controversy, and fabricated reporting by the Asahi Shimbun, this essay argues that only by breaking free from the postwar self-abasing complex and thinking independently can the Japanese people defeat China’s anti-Japan strategy.

2019-04-10
If the Japanese think with their own heads, form their own opinions, and break free from the self-abasing complex that is the postwar defeated-regime mentality, that itself will shatter China’s strategy toward Japan.
The chapter I posted on 2017-03-07 under the title Japan and the Japanese people should have proclaimed this to the world in a mighty voice is reprinted here.
Tetsuhide Yamaoka has published in this month’s issue of the magazine Seiron a genuine essay of a kind rarely seen in recent years, a true labor of scholarship stretching across eight pages in three-column format.
Tetsuhide Yamaoka.
Born in Tokyo in 1965.
In 2014, after learning of the movement to install a comfort women statue in Strathfield, Australia, he formed the Australia-Japan Community Network, or AJCN.
Reversing overwhelming disadvantage, he succeeded in preventing the installation of the comfort women statue in that city in 2015.
Preamble omitted.
The parts enclosed by asterisks are mine.

Of course, telling the truth is important.
But that alone is wholly insufficient.
Since the so-called “textbook misreporting incident” of 1982, in which it was falsely reported that the then Ministry of Education had tried to make “invasion” be rewritten as “advance,” China learned that if it struck Japan over historical issues, Japan would easily bend the knee, and since then it has ignored factual verification and attacked Japan relentlessly through historical issues.
It was the Asahi Shimbun that splashed this lie across its front page as a major scoop and reported it on a grand scale.
Not only that, it was also the Asahi Shimbun that conveyed this to China and encouraged attacks on the Japanese government.
In August three years earlier, the Asahi Shimbun officially apologized in a press conference, admitting that two of its major stories had been fabrications.
One was the comfort women reporting that repeated Seiji Yoshida’s lies sixteen times and spread them throughout international society.
The other was its reporting on Masao Yoshida, the director of Fukushima Daiichi.
After that, it created a so-called committee made up of people it had chosen itself, and sought to settle the matter with nothing more than the resignation of its president.
At that moment, Japan and the Japanese people should have made the firm decision to shut this newspaper down.
And then, regarding the anti-Japan propaganda that China, a one-party communist dictatorship, and South Korea, which in reality is a Nazi-like state, have persistently continued in international society,
whether the United Nations, parts of America, and parts of Europe truly believed it, or whether they were merely hoping to exploit it to extort money from Japan.
In any case, Japan and the Japanese people should have proclaimed their folly and malice to the world in a mighty voice.
The Asahi Shimbun has not merely continued to inflict enormous damage on the honor and credibility of Japan and the Japanese people through fabricated reporting, but has also constantly informed against Japan to China and South Korea.
It is a newspaper company that cannot possibly be forgiven, and it is no exaggeration to call it traitorous.
Therefore, as of this day, Japan and the Japanese people should have declared to the world that the Asahi Shimbun had been abolished.
That is what should have been proclaimed loudly and proudly.
Had that been done, deflation would already have been overcome.
China’s lawlessness, too, would not have become this severe.

The reason is not, as naive Japanese tend to think, that “Chinese people are angry because the Japanese do not reflect.”
Rather, China has thoroughly attacked this point because historical issues are the greatest weakness of the Japanese people.
No matter how sincerely Japan apologizes, the situation will not improve at all.
That is because the purpose of the Chinese government is to keep Japan apologizing forever.
And of course, the effort to erect comfort women statues all over the world is likewise carried out in line with a strategy of crushing Japanese self-respect, burying Japan in guilt and self-loathing, and isolating it internationally.
South Korea is being completely used by China, yet, drowning in the passions of resentment, it has lost sight of itself and is even trying to dissolve its own country.
The Chinese Communist Party’s strategy toward Japan is, in fact, astonishingly simple and consistent.
Therefore, if the Japanese become self-reliant, think with their own heads, form their own opinions, and break free from the self-abasing complex that is the postwar defeated-regime mentality, that itself will shatter China’s strategy toward Japan.
Perhaps Chen wanted to convey that to us in a quiet way.
The rest is omitted.