China again on Wednesday urged Japanese individuals to stop peddling false narratives, retract erroneous remarks on the Taiwan question, and give a responsible account to China and the international community.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun made the remarks at a regular news briefing in response to reports that Keiichi Ichikawa, head of Japan's National Security Secretariat, recently communicated with countries, including the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Canada, to clarify Japan's position and rebut China's response to comments on Taiwan made by Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi.
Ichikawa claimed that Takaichi's remarks had not altered Japan's long-standing policy on Taiwan.
Some voices in Japan have argued that Japan is a "peace-loving" country and that China's criticism is "inconsistent with the facts".
"Japan's actions once again exposed how some people in the country are accustomed to turning right into wrong, distorting facts, refusing to correct mistakes, and repeating them knowingly, while attempting to play the victim on the international stage to elicit sympathy," Guo told reporters.
He noted that right-wing forces in Japan have a long record of fabricating false narratives—portraying wars of aggression against Asian neighbors as "liberation", downplaying the appalling Nanjing Massacre as the "Nanjing Incident", whitewashing the notorious Unit 731 as an organization "engaged in public health research", and misrepresenting the forced recruitment of laborers and "comfort women" as "voluntary".
After the war, Guo said, Japan constructed a narrative of being a victim of war while avoiding discussion of militarism as the root cause of the calamities.
It has insisted on so-called exclusively defense-oriented and "passive" defense policies, yet repeatedly loosened restrictions on the exercise of collective self-defense, relaxed limits on arms exports, and even sought to revise the three non-nuclear principles, he added.
Guo noted that the erroneous remarks on Taiwan by Takaichi have not only triggered strong public outrage in China, but have also drawn opposition and criticism within Japan and from many other countries.
What Japan should do, he said, is listen seriously and engage in deep reflection, rather than going around the world making excuses and lobbying, which will only prove counterproductive.
