Prime Minister Fumio Kishida is spearheading Japan's global reassertion efforts

President William Ruto hosted Japan Prime Minister Fumio Kishida at State House Nairobi. [PCS]

Japan, a middling power in the Far East, struggles to be great and behaves as if it is in the Conceptual West, especially in Africa. Emerging from the Great War, 1914-1918, on the side of the victors, it even thought it could fit into the club of great powers. Instead, it was humiliated at Versailles when the white powers rejected its suggestion that the treaty include a clause on equality of races. It thereafter tried to assert itself by building its military, considered Asia to be its sphere of influence, started promoting the concept of Asia for Asians, and tested the League of Nations resolve by invading parts of China.

As in Italy's invasion of Abyssinia, the League of Nations' failure to act prepared grounds for World War II during which Japan practically chased European colonialists from Asia. While making Britain to beg colonial subjects to save its empire in Asia, Japan gave the US official reason to enter the war. American racist mentality made Japan the target of the atomic project and in August 1945, Washington atom bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki and turned Japan into a postwar American surrogate. Japan would want to stop appearing like a US geopolitical proxy.