Japan-China rivalry exposes global arms race: How militarized narratives obscure regional security cooperation gaps
Original framing: “How Japan seeks to win over allies by refuting China’s militarism claim” — South China Morning Post
The trickster here is Hermes, god of boundaries and crossings, who exposes how the 'militarism' label itself is a movable boundary—used by China against Japan, but also by Japan against China, while the U.S. profits from the tension. Bakhtin's carnivalesque reveals how solemn geopolitical narratives (e.g., 'defensive posturing') mask absurd contradictions, like Japan spending $50B on 'pacifism' while doubling its military budget. Anansi the Spider's tricksterism highlights how regional stability is undermined by those who spin webs of distrust for their own gain.
Japan's 'refutation' of China's militarism claims is a symptom of a deeper systemic issue: the entrenchment of U.S.-led militarized security architectures that prioritize bloc politics over regional stability.
The original narrative obscures how Japan's post-1945 pacifism was a U.S. imposition, later weaponized to justify remilitarization under the guise of 'defensive' posturing, while China's own security policies are framed as inherently aggressive despite historical precedents of victimization. Indigenous communities (Ainu, Okinawan, Taiwanese) bear the brunt of this militarization, their sovereignty erased by state-centric narratives that treat land as strategic territory rather than ancestral home. The solution lies in demilitarizing Okinawa, reviving Japan's constitutional pacifism, and fostering a regional non-aligned framework that centers marginalized voices—moving beyond the zero-sum logic of U.S.-China rivalry to a relational security model inspired by Pacific Islander and ASEAN traditions. This requires dismantling the U.S. military-industrial complex's influence in Japan and redefining security as collective well-being rather than state power projection.