Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida dishonestly omitted any mention of the US in his speech last weekend commemorating the 78th anniversary of the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima, instead shamefully exploiting this solemn occasion to fearmonger about Russia. He claimed that a nuclear-free world is “increasingly difficult because of deepening divisions in the international community over nuclear disarmament and Russia’s nuclear threat”, the latter observation of which simply isn’t true.
Russia has never threatened to employ nuclear weapons for the same offensive purposes as the US did against Japan, albeit on the faux pretext of ‘saving American lives’ despite this really being done to send a message to the erstwhile USSR, but it did indeed imply their use for defensive purposes. President Putin suggested as much late last year when reminding everyone that Russia will resort to all means at its disposal for defending itself from existential in accordance with related doctrine.
This statement was intended to deter the US and its vassals from acting on those unprecedentedly dangerous proposals that are being recklessly bandied about nowadays by anti-Russian demagogues in the ‘expert community’, Mainstream Media, and those countries’ policymaking bureaucracies. To refresh the reader’s memory, these concern the previously unthinkable scenarios of a nuclear first strike against Russia, a large-scale conventional invasion of it, and/or ‘Balkanizing’ that country via other means.
There’s no comparison between Russia sharing a timely reminder that unprovoked aggression which risks threatening its existence will be responded to with all means at its disposal in self-defense and the US dropping two nukes on civilian targets on the pretext of saving the lives of its potentially invading forces. It was shameful for Kishida to equate the two and dishonest of him to omit any mention of the US by name when doing so on the 78th anniversary of its nuclear bombing of Hiroshima.
It’s unclear how the Japanese public reacted to this, but one can assume that they weren’t too pleased considering their response to Warner Bros.’ insensitive tweet about ‘Barbenheimer’, the portmanteau of the “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” films that recently went viral across the West. Since making light of the US’ nuclear bombing of Japan offended so many of the victims’ descendants, then it therefore follows that manipulating perceptions of that tragedy to score political points did so as well.
The larger context in which this historical travesty took place involves Kishida’s desire to present Japan as the US’ most reliable Asian vassal in the New Cold War, which he expects will result in it being rewarded with various privileges. This explains why he’d disrespect the Hiroshima and Nagasaki victims’ memories the way that he did since he considered the anniversary of their nuclear bombings to be an opportunity for showing his country’s fealty to its patron by fearmongering about “Russia’s nuclear threat”.
One’s family and their ancestors are held in the highest regard in Japanese society, yet Kishida spit on all those connected with these two tragedies just for the sake of pushing American propaganda. It was more important for him to have his words as the Japanese premier on this solemn occasion used by the Mainstream Media for extending false credence to the sensational scenario of Russia using nukes for offensive purposes than to pay proper respect to the victims of the US’ two nuclear bombings.
