In the last century, the Japanese imperialists inflicted untold misfortunes and pains on the peoples of many countries of the world while waging a war of aggression to realize their ambition for world domination called the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere”.

The “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” was an aggressive wild dream geared to expanding the exclusive colonial “sphere of influence” set forth by the Japanese imperialists in the 1940s.

The Japanese imperialists had long pursued their ambition for world domination and set it as a state policy.

It was specified in Tanaka’s memorial to the Throne.

According to the plan of aggression discussed and confirmed at the “Oriental meeting” in July 1927, Tanaka Kiichi submitted a secret document to the Japanese king, which was later called “Tanaka’s memorial to the Throne”. The memorial was run through with the idea that it is a main state policy to invade Manchuria and Mongolia with Korea, which had already been reduced to its completely exclusive colony, as a stepping-stone, conquer China and, furthermore, dominate Asia.

Consequently, the Japanese imperialists, not content with the occupation and colonization of Korea, harboured a sinister intention to dominate Asia by further expanding their aggression against other countries and nations, and defined it as a national policy.

The Japanese imperialists tried to keep the document secret for fear that they would come under denunciation and criticism from the world people if their plan for invading the continent was exposed.

But in 1929 the document was disclosed and the Tanaka government, driven into a tight corner, collapsed.

Despite the fall of the Tanaka government, Japan’s national policy of dominating the world remained unchanged. On the contrary, in the 1940s the Japanese imperialists’ ambition for world domination developed into the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” which was greater in scale and more detailed and systematized.

The “plan for building the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” completed by the Japanese imperialists was comprised of three stages.

The first stage was to establish a “core sphere” of the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere”, which includes Korea, Manchuria, North China, the lower reaches of the Yangtze River and the Maritime Territory of the Soviet Union, centring on Japan. The second stage was to create a “smaller co-prosperity sphere” by adding to the “core sphere” eastern Siberia, the whole of China, the Southeast Asian peninsula and islands in the South Pacific, and the third stage was to create a “greater co-prosperity sphere” that connects Australia, New Zealand, India and several islands in the Pacific.

The Japanese even dreamed of a “Greater East Asia commercial expansion sphere” covering the Middle East, Africa and America.

The “plan for building the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” entered the phase of full-scale implementation as Japan started the Pacific War.

After creating a “Greater East Asia province” in 1942 by merging the countries it had occupied, the Japanese imperialists organized a “Greater East Asia construction council” in February 1943. They also worked out a “guiding programme of the Greater East Asia strategy” in May 1943 and a “basic policy for the building of Greater East Asia” in July that year.

The course of implementing the plan was a sequence of bloody crimes.

The Japanese imperialists, who occupied many countries and were hell-bent on realizing their wild dream of “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” while inflicting misfortunes upon the peoples of those countries, dug their own grave.

Several decades have passed since the imperial Japan’s defeat, but Japan has not yet given up its wild dream of the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” and is now making desperate efforts to stage another “Greater East Asia War” in the Asia-Pacific in collusion with outside forces.

The states in the region which suffered untold damage from Japan in the last century will never tolerate it.

If Japan mounts overseas invasion again, failing to draw a lesson from its crime-woven history, it will meet its ruin in eternal disgrace as a war criminal state and a defeated nation.