Diaoyu 'purchase,' a 'Dr Feelgood' shot goes wrong

The Japanese government announced on Tuesday that it would strengthen daily monitoring in the Diaoyu Islands, exactly one year after Tokyo barged ahead with the farce of "buying" the Chinese territories.

This proves that Japan is still high on its brew of nationalism and manufactured sense of aggression, though it has been vowing to save its relations with China from the current downturn.

The Diaoyu Islands had never belonged to Japan and was recognized as China's territories by binding post-war legal documents, such as the Cairo Declaration and the Potsdam Proclamation.

Japan should have realized that it is the party that poisoned the bilateral relations and the improvement of that relationship rests with itself.

Since taking office late last year, however, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe never questioned his country's responsibility in roiling regional tensions by beautifying atrocious wartime crime, winking and nodding to national rightwing loudmouths and trampling on neighboring countries' sensitivities in the name of self-defense.

Prescribed by "Dr Feelgood" Abe, those "rightist" medication may be politically expedient for Japan's conservatives, but can never get approval from its neighboring states and the international community.

In the latest scenario, a hawkish Abe broke with two decades of tradition by omitting any expression of remorse for Japan's past aggression in Asia on the 68th anniversary of its World War II surrender.

The rapid moves to the right are the Abe government's further steps towards rearmament and the revival of Japanese militarism.

But it underestimates the determination of the Chinese government that has led its country to have overtaken Japan as the world's second largest economy.

Committed to common development and prosperity with its neighbors, China will never give way to a bullying Japan as it did more than 80 years ago.

History matters. Rather than a resurrection of the samurai, Japan should make a right and responsible choice to improve China-Japan relations for the benefit of both countries and the region at large.