Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

"I came here, not that I was sidelined in Tokyo."  Upon Nobusuke Kishi's arrival in "Manchukuo" in 1936, he kept bragging about his "Japan-Manchukuo integration" schemes. "The industrial and economic development of 'Manchukuo' is not only its own concern but also Japan's concern." 

Kishi, who later served as the 56th and 57th Japanese Prime Minister and, more notoriously, an A-Class WWII war criminal before that, then picked up and faithfully finished the duty of economic exploitation in "Manchukuo," a puppet regime established by the Japanese militants on Chinese territory. 

History always keeps repeating itself. Eighty-five years later, former Japanese Prime Minister Abe Shinzo arrogated to himself the courage to say that "a Taiwan contingency is a contingency for Japan. In other words, it is also a contingency for the Japan-U.S. alliance."

As the grandson of Kishi, whose prime contribution was ensuring that America "must" safeguard Japan, Abe could easily find in his blood something hereditary: A mouthful of saliva dropping on Chinese territory and the same kind of obsequiousness towards their North American sugar daddy who once sent Curtis LeMay into its air and Douglas MacArthur to its land. 

I suppose we should congratulate Mr. Abe for stepping down. For one thing, his illness did not go straight to his brain, as he still remains fully conscious of who to suck up to; for another, eventually, he could stoop so low as to hide behind an imaginary shield labeled "HEY, I'M NO LONGER IN CHARGE, OK?," while sending an SOS to Washington and copying Tokyo -- "HELP! What am I gonna do next?" 

Or even worse. If the assertion is, as explained by the Japanese government, something personal about Abe, which none of us would ever believe, all I have to say is that the despicable ambition to put a filthy finger in China's internal affairs could have been an unspeakable dream from Day 1 in office. He did not become the longest-serving post-war Japanese Prime Minister for nothing. He is an astonishingly sophisticated politician who knows precisely how to sweep his desire under the carpet when in office. 

This is one of the reasons why he is said to outperform former Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke, his grandfather, former Prime Minister and frequent Yasukuni Shrine visitor Sato Eisaku, Kishi's brother, former Foreign Minister Abe Shintaro, his father, and current Defense Minister Kishi Nobuo, his brother.

One of the real problems within the family that concerns every Chinese is that they all have an above-mentioned filthy finger stretched into the Taiwan Straits, which, in a serious narrative, is an outrageous attempt to relive its militarist dream.   

The Japanese government often has an absurd mindset towards Taiwan. After illegally occupying Taiwan for more than nearly half a century, Japan still doesn't want to miss any chance to exert its influence on the Chinese island.

When Nobusuke Kishi was in charge, he managed to include Taiwan in Japan's defensive range in 1960 in the Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security between the United States and Japan, a treaty that resulted in overwhelming protests domestically, and subsequently the collapse of his cabinet. Then, he visited Taiwan in 1969, a time when Taiwan's ejection from the UN seemed inevitable, in an attempt to suggest Chiang Kai-shek remain in the UN as "Republic of Taiwan," a flagrant violation of China's sovereignty. 

When Sato Eisaku was in charge, he visited Taiwan in 1967 (the last Japanese Prime Minister to officially visit Taiwan when in office) to push Chiang Kai-shek to attack the mainland. Mr. Sato then asserted that Taiwan was a crucial element in Japan's security in the Joint Communique Between the United States and Japan in 1969 and followed the United States in 1971 in the UN to promote a resolution that allowed the "dual representation" of China and Taiwan in the UN, which was met with furious objections from countries around the world, and failed. The Japanese people could not bear his anti-China agenda any more in 1972 and ditched him that year, a year when China and Japan established diplomatic ties. 

I then don't feel it necessary to repeat how Mr. Kishi Nobuo in recent days hyped the so-called "Chinese threat" and talked nonsense about Taiwan, as it is almost his daily routine. It is probably fair to say that where there is Japan meddling in Taiwan affairs, there is the Abe family and the shadow named America. 

However, what is appalling is that they seem to have completely forgotten that the People's Republic of China is not the Qing Dynasty, and meddling in China's internal affairs is, seriously, the last thing the Chinese people can put up with. Those who step across China's red line will definitely be met with China's resolute response.

And we have seen that before.

In 1588, Japan, united by one of its most famous historic icons, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, invaded the Joseon Dynasty. At the request of the emperor of the Joseon, China sent troops to form a Ming-Joseon Alliance, leaving some 80,000 Japanese dead in the war and got rid of the rest.

In 1931, the Fascist Regime of Japan invaded China as part of WWII. And after 14 years of unyielding resistance, the Chinese people, together with the Allied forces, defeated the Japanese Imperial Army and successfully sent war criminals to the Tokyo trial.

If we come back to the beginning of the article, we will find that Kishi Nobusuke, who was sentenced as an A-class war criminal in the Tokyo trial, somehow escaped from being hanged under the protection of the Americans because he was believed to have played a crucial part in convicting Hideki Tojo, No. 1 on America's black list for planning the Pacific War.

Had Kishi Nobusuke not been illegally helped by the Americans in 1948 and escape execution, an end that he deserved, it would remain uncertain whether the Kishi family could stay in power, and it would be in doubt whether his daughter could marry Abe Shintaro in 1951 and give birth to Abe Shinzo in 1954. 

Oh Gosh! Were it not for the Americans, our problem with the Kishi family could have been solved long before.

That's not strange at all. "Were it not for the Americans" is almost an answer linked to most of the problems we have in the world.

     

The author is a commentator on international affairs, writing regularly for Global Times, CGTN, Xinhua News Agency, etc.. He can be reached at xinping604@gmail.com.