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Throughout that period, Japan had made honest efforts to keep the destruction of war from spreading and, based on the belief that all nations of the world should find their places, had followed a policy designed to restore an expeditious peace between Japan and China.

Nevertheless, China was unfortunately unable to understand Japan's real position, and it is greatly to be regretted that the Sino-Japanese War became one of long duration.

It makes sense for Japan to pursue a more independent role in the world, following Latin America and others in freeing itself from U.S. domination.

The reason was the failure of both Japan and China to understand each other and the inability of America and the European powers to sympathize, without prejudice, with the peoples of East Asia.

We must clearly see that international hostile forces are intensifying the strategic plot of Westernizing and dividing China, and ideological and cultural fields are the focal areas of their long-term infiltration.

The war has developed not necessarily to Japan's advantage.

History demonstrates that previous military drawdowns invited aggression by our enemies. After World War I, America drew down forces until the U.S. Army had fewer than 100,000 men in uniform. That weakness invited Nazi aggression in Europe and the imperial Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor.

Subsequently, the Japanese people experienced a variety of vicissitudes and were involved in international disputes, eventually, for the first time in their history, experiencing the horrors of modern warfare on their own soil during World War II.

I don't share the view that China and the U.S. need to reach some kind of strategic accommodation to carve up the Asia-Pacific region - that is an arrogant proposition and deeply insulting to other countries in the region, including Japan and potentially also India and Indonesia.