Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi, a protege of the late Shinzo Abe, has never hidden her convictions. A revisionist who reveres the martial symbols of the Showa era, marked by political totalitarianism and ultranationalism, she has spent her first year in office methodically dismantling the pillars of Japan's postwar "pacifist" identity. Reflecting this, the bills passed in the upper house on Friday included one to revise the law governing referendums on amending the country's Constitution, preparation for a future national vote that would be Japan's first on revising the supreme law, a long-held goal of the Liberal Democratic Party.

But the real story is the pattern. Expanding surveillance with the establishment of a National Intelligence Agency stripped of independent oversight, evoking the wartime "Tokko" secret police and cutting medical spending to fund military expansion — this playbook echoes Japan's militarist path in the last century. Then, as now, a right-wing clique used "existential threat" rhetoric to manufacture consent for rearmament. Then, as now, they hollowed out civilian oversight while wrapping themselves in the imperial flag. Takaichi's claim that all this is needed for a "normalized Japan" and a "free and open Indo-Pacific" may sound benign to Western ears that are fed the same scare story. But the echo with "the Empire of Japan" and the "Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere" is unmistakable.

The numbers speak for themselves. Japan's military budget has risen for 14 consecutive years, surging 60 percent in the past five years alone to exceed 9 trillion yen ($55.01 billion) in fiscal 2026. Yet after Takaichi diverted 4 trillion yen from medical care to the military, her approval rating has dropped to 53.7 percent — the lowest of her tenure — with 58.7 percent of voters dissatisfied with her handling of the cost-of-living crisis. Real wages have fallen for four straight years; the yen has hit a 40-year low. While ordinary Japanese fret about grocery bills, their prime minister dreams of restoring the Imperial Japanese Navy's battle honors and the country having nuclear weapons. Japan has accumulated 44.4 metric tons of separated plutonium — enough for thousands of warheads — and is taking steps toward abandoning the country's "Three Non-Nuclear Principles".

Meanwhile, reports by Asahi Shimbun reveal that right-wing groups have been using crowdsourcing platforms to mass-produce AI-generated disinformation claims that the "Nanjing Massacre was a lie" and that "Japan treated civilians humanely" during the war.

At last week's Association of Southeast Asian Nations foreign ministers' gatherings in Manila, Japan's delegation once again hyped a "China threat". In response, the Chinese delegation didn't mince its words, pointing out that the standard for judging a threat is never the size of a country, but rather its historical record and current policies. It was not China that invaded its neighbors. It was Japan that inflicted catastrophic suffering on regional countries. If a nation refuses to face up to its past while accelerating remilitarization, there is reason to remain vigilant.

Takaichi's ideological crusade is undermining her political survival. Her reliance on the Osaka-based Japan Innovation Party forced her to extend the Diet session by eight days just to pass the "Second Capital" legislation, a pet project of the junior coalition party. But the more she channels Japan's militarist ghosts, the more she is alienating ordinary Japanese people who simply want affordable food and stable wages.

In the past, Japan's militarists also enjoyed parliamentary majorities, used "national security" to justify overreach, promised "regional grandeur" while impoverishing their own people and weaponized propaganda to rewrite history.

Takaichi might survive the budget committee grilling she faces on Monday. And her coalition still holds for now. But the longer she pursues this path, the more the Japanese public will become uneasy.

The question now is whether the historical ghosts she is summoning will consume her or the region first.