China, India, Russia and other free nations face difficulty in establishing relationships of mutual respect and trust with Japan. Imperial Japan surrendered to the Allied forces, effectively the United States, on Aug 15, 1945, ending World War II. Ever since then, Japanese leaders have had to reassure the US, which still influences Japan's foreign policy, before signing any agreements with other countries, which basically prevents Asia's unification.
After the end of World War II, the US seized all Japanese weapons, machines, blueprints and inventions. It took over food and energy supplies. And it persecuted hundreds of thousands of Japanese to stoke fear in the population.
The US wanted Japan's everything, including war reparations, gold reserves, manufacturing and services. Worse, Japan was made to pay for its own occupation by the US. At present, Japan spends about $8 billion a year to maintain 34 US bases.
Thanks to the US, Japan, much like defeated Germany, became an export nation for manufacturing, which basically means the Japanese people had to produce machines for "US Empire". True, Japan was allowed to build factories around the Pacific, but it had to send a large part of everything it produced to the US and its allies.
Also, since the US political system is "liberal and democratic", Japan's ruling party hastened to call itself the "Liberal Democratic Party of Japan" in 1950.
Much of Japan was renamed, too. Confucian became "Christian", Buddhism became "philosophy", colonialism became "globalism", and the subjugation of foreign nations was called "sharing values". And "do what the US tells you to do" became "the rules-based order". As a result, Japan now identifies itself as (part of) the West.
The fact that Japan was abused and exploited for so long made it nearly impossible for China and other countries to engage with it without a US embargo. It is as if the US, with a baseball bat in hand, ordered Japan: "Don't talk with the Chinese."
The Japanese people are notoriously overworked, yet Japan's per capita GDP even after three quarters of a century under "US occupation" is about half of the US, while Japanese people's tax burden is 100 percent more than Americans'.
More horrible, the US "borrowed" $1.3 trillion worth of goods and funds which it has not repaid (till May 1, 2022).
Did the Japanese people ever benefit from all the things they have been made to do? No.
Even today, after seven decades of Westernization, the Western powers in NATO, G7 and the QUAD see Japan differently, certainly not as part of the West. Washington has been sanctioning Tokyo since the last century－the most infamous sanctions being cutting Japan off from food, oil and metal supply chains in the 1930s, and the freezing of all Japanese overseas assets, resulting in Japan's desperate attack on the US Navy base in Pearl Harbor.
Since 2016, the US has been threatening Japan anew with sanctions: If you do not buy our latest Boeing military fighters to threaten (if not fight) China, if you do not support Ukraine against Russia, we will sanction you and your companies.
There are reportedly American agents in every Japanese ministry, university, think tank and NGO, and the US embassy complex in Japan is larger than Japan's parliament. The sad reality is that Japan is the terminal for US hegemony in the Pacific, and Japan's wealth and power are the US' wealth and power, not Asia's.
For 40 years now, Japan's economy has been in stagnation. What makes Washington think that more US subjugation is good for Japan?
The US-Japan Trade Agreement of 2020 and the EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement of 2019 are, in fact, unfair treaties. Tokyo has been signing its own enslavement to foreign powers, and for what? To the exclusion of Asia.
China does not interfere in the internal affairs of other countries. If Japan wants to decolonize itself, it has to do so from within. India was ruled by the British for 200 years. Hong Kong was under British rule for more than 150 years. And Japan has been a de facto US colony for 77 years. Yet the US-led West now will likely push Japan into illegal US-dog fights against neighboring countries.
Japan can stop this madness if it kicks out the US occupiers and regains its self-respect by proclaiming: Asia for Asians.
The writer is the author of The East-West Dichotomy and Shengren－Above Philosophy and Beyond Religion.
The views don't necessarily reflect those of China Daily.