Japanese unusual military moves to achieve its ambition for overseas expansion are looming up with each passing day.

As has been made public, the Japanese government decided on November 10 to extend for another year the stationing of its “Self-Defence Forces” warships that had been dispatched to the sea off Somalia in the Horn of Africa.

Accordingly, the long-time stationing of Japanese “Self-Defence Forces” troops which has lasted over 10 years since March 2009 under the pretext of “counter-piracy” has now come to continue.

The world is questioning as to why Japan, which has been repeatedly trumpeting “total defence”, is clinging to the long-lasting stationing of its “Self-Defence Forces” in the seas off Africa, thousands miles away from its mainland, and is forcibly deploying its military base in Djibouti.

This writer would like to draw that answer from the Japanese criminal record.

The leverage secured for achieving its ambition of aggression and the resultant military operations, and the enforcement of legal measures for their justification – these were the types of action and procedures peculiar to Japan which had been indulged in aggression and war in the past.

Japan – a war criminal state that had inflicted untold miseries, sufferings and disasters upon the peoples of Korea and other Asian countries through its aggression and war in the last century, yet a country that had been revived and rearmed under the patronage of its master after its defeat – followed in the footsteps of its old Empire and made frenzied attempts to break free from the fetters of war renunciation by building its military forces up to the world’s fifth level and framing up consecutively the legislation for overseas dispatch of the “Self-Defence Forces.” These are the facts acknowledged by everyone.

With an outpouring of tremendous military expenditure, Japan has continued to stockpile ultra-modern attack means such as modern stealth fighter capable of carrying out long-range operations, refuelling plane with a flying range of more than 12,000km, and escort warship which is virtually an aircraft carrier.

It will be clear even to a mere child that such military hardware is not for defensive purpose to Japan encircled on all sides by the sea.

Having been equipped with the military hardware for realizing its ambition of overseas expansion, Japan also sought to lay the legal foundations one after another for “justifying” its ulterior motive of advancing overseas.

With the turn of this century alone, the Japanese Diet passed the “law on special measures to counter terrorism” in October 2001 and the “law on counter-piracy” in July 2009, thus having widened the floodgates for troops dispatch overseas that had started to be opened in the 1990s.

Especially with the enactment and enforcement of “security law” in September 2015 during the Abe’s second term of office, Japan made it possible for its “Self-Defence Forces” to take military actions, rampaging through the globe under the cloak of “international peacekeeping.”

After attaching a tag of “legitimacy” to the overseas dispatch and securing the military leverage, Japan has been incessantly accumulating its experience through training under real war condition and action-oriented drills.

Military activities conducted abroad under the conditions of simulating a real war and accumulation of the experience for aggression wars – herein lie the real intention of the dispatching and the stationing the troops of “Self-Defense Forces” abroad for a long period of time.

All the above facts speak vividly to the Japanese sinister design to achieve its ambition of reinvasion at any cost, still being wedded to its old dream of “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.”

What can we expect from a crow but a caw stinking of carcass?

The trumpeting of habitual language by Japan such as “counter-piracy” and “peacekeeping” is only reminding the people of the disgraced looks of the old Japanese Imperial Army who had cried for “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.”

The anachronistic attempts by Japan for overseas expansion will only invite its self-destruction.

Ra Guk Chol

Researcher of the Institute for Studies of Japan

Ministry of Foreign Affairs, DPRK