From pacifist to talks of going nuclear: China shaken as Japan breaks 80-yr-old shackles

For eight decades Japan's security posture was defined by three near-sacred rules: no meaningful use of military power, no arms exports, and minimal spending on defence.The constraints were not just policy. They were the scaffolding of a post‑war identity.Between the 1890s and 1945, Japanese imperial expansion brought occupation, mass violence, forced labor, sexual slavery (comfort women), and wartime atrocities across East and Southeast Asia. Those experiences are embedded in national histories, education, museums and family memories across China, Korea, the Philippines and elsewhere.After the end of World War 2, Japan's adoption of pacifism was meant not only to limit Tokyo's options but to reassure neighbours that imperial aggression would not recur.Post‑war institutions, apology diplomacy, and constraints on bases and weapons became part of a regional social contract.But over the last decade, Tokyo has steadily chipped away at these post‑war shackles.Defence budgets are rising, military capabilities are being rebuilt, weapon sales…