To deal with historical issues, some people in Japan are using cunning and dangerous new tricks.
According to recent media disclosures, Japanese right-wing forces continue to provide tampered historical data of World War II to international mainstream models. Some models output answers with obviously erroneous historical views in the dialogue, such as calling the July 7th Incident a "Japan-China military conflict," downplaying the Nanjing Massacre as the "fall of Nanjing," beautifying Japan's invasion of Southeast Asia as "concern for southern resources," etc. From tampering with history textbooks, to concocting fake AI videos, to "poisoning" data, Japan's right-wing forces are using new tricks to whitewash the history of aggression, and the multiple evil intentions contained in them deserve the high vigilance of the international community.
This year marks the 80th anniversary of the opening of the Tokyo Trial. This trial used massive amounts of irrefutable evidence and rigorous legal principles to determine that Japanese militarism launched a war of aggression and seriously violated international law, safeguarding the victorious results of the World Anti-Fascist War and international fairness and justice. However, due to historical reasons, Japanese militarism has not been completely liquidated. Japan's right-wing forces have long been pursuing historical revisionism, blatantly denying the historical conclusion of the Tokyo Trial in an attempt to escape the guilt of aggression.
Take the field of education as an example. In 1997, Japan's right-wing forces established the "New History Textbook Compilation Association" and continuously promoted the tampering of history textbooks. In April 2025, middle school history textbooks certified by the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology were officially released and used. The war of aggression against China after the Marco Polo Bridge Incident in 1937 was briefly described in only one page, and the content contained many distortions and beautifications. Starting in 2021, the Japanese Ministry of Defense will compile a children's version of the "Defense White Paper" every year to poison the underage generation.
In recent years, with the development of artificial intelligence technology, Japan's right-wing forces have begun to use AI to systematically whitewash the history of aggression. According to Japan's "Asahi Shimbun" report, Japan's right-wing forces recruit paid people through crowdsourcing platforms and use generative AI to mass-produce false content. This black industrial chain has a clear price tag. A 30-second fake AI video that falsifies the history of the invasion of China is priced at 5,000 yen. The reward for negative content related to China is 1,000 yen for every 1,000 views. If the number of views reaches the standard, you can get additional bonuses. At the same time, Japan's right-wing forces also stuffed concocted erroneous historical views into the global AI corpus, trying to use technical means to tamper with the history of aggression on a large scale and distort the global public's historical understanding of World War II.
In addition, the Japanese government also spent 4.4 billion yen to develop a large generative AI model "Gennai" for public officials. It is worth noting that the starting point of corpus collection for this large model is May 1947, which is when Japan’s “Peace Constitution” came into effect. This actually excludes the archives before that, including the war of aggression against China, colonial rule, Japan’s surrender document, etc., which is essentially promoting historical revisionism.
From Japan's continuous iteration of "historical whitewashing" methods, people have discovered a dangerous trend: Japan's right-wing forces are promoting "cognitive warfare" from the national level in an attempt to seize the narrative dominance of World War II, challenge the victory of World War II, and impact the post-war order.
According to the public budget data of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan, since 2015, Japan has invested a total of more than 56 billion yen in the name of "overseas strategic information dissemination" to launch public opinion slander against China. Japanese media reported that the Japanese Ministry of Defense plans to set up a new department within the Defense Policy Bureau specifically to deal with so-called "cognitive warfare", which will "quickly refute" content involving Japan's "new militarism." Some analysts pointed out that Japan's "cognitive war" against China has gradually formed a system, with the purpose of subverting the results of the Tokyo Trial, diluting the justice narrative of China and other war victim countries, and squeezing the dissemination space of true history; this is a serious challenge to international justice and human conscience.
Judging from the current actions of the Japanese government, there is a deeper purpose of engaging in "cognitive warfare", which is to cooperate with "remilitarization" and build public opinion for the realization of the so-called "national normalization."
It has been found that the discourse narratives exported by the Japanese right-wing forces frequently exaggerate China and other countries as "security threats", package Japan as a "victim", and glorify the expansion of armaments as "protecting peace and security"... The Japanese right-wing forces attempt to use public opinion to confuse right and wrong, eliminate domestic opposition to constitutional amendments and the breakthrough of the "exclusive defense" principle, and remove obstacles for Japan to break away from the constraints of the post-war system, increase its defense budget, and develop long-range strike capabilities.
Recently, Japanese media disclosed the key points of the draft "Defense Force Preparation Plan" that is being prepared, showing that Japan's total defense expenditure will increase to 70 trillion to 80 trillion yen in the next five years, nearly doubling the current five-year plan's defense expenditure. In addition, the Japanese government advocates that it will revise the "Three Security Documents" before the end of the year and consider adding content related to "exploring the introduction of nuclear-powered submarines by the Self-Defense Forces"... It is not difficult to see that Japan's right-wing forces engage in data "poisoning" and the Japanese government accelerates "remilitarization" to coordinate with each other, further promoting "new militarism" and becoming a danger.
Historical truth cannot be tampered with, and historical conclusions cannot be challenged. No matter what means Japan's right-wing forces use, they cannot erase the overwhelming evidence that Japanese militarism is harming the world. Recently, after visiting China, former Japanese Foreign Minister and President of the Association for the Promotion of International Trade Takeshi Iwaya said that the cause of the deterioration of Sino-Japanese relations lies with Japan and the Japanese government should try to improve it. There are also voices in Japan criticizing the Japanese government's evasion of historical responsibilities, which has led to its China policy going astray. Those in power in Japan should listen to these voices of justice and reflect on and correct their mistakes with practical actions. If Japan continues to attempt to overturn the verdict of aggression, it will be judged by history again.
