"In 2026, we will have to continue countering the right-wing policy agenda, and Beijing should step up collaboration with other countries in the Asia-Pacific region to further champion the postwar international order, which is also key to the region's peace and stability," Lan said.

Observers also urged Tokyo to acknowledge its "dark and unflattering past" as it seeks to remove constitutional bans on Japan's military buildup.

Article 9 of Japan's pacifist Constitution clearly states that "the Japanese people forever renounce war as a sovereign right of the nation and the threat or use of force as means of settling international disputes".

Dutch writer Ian Buruma, an expert on East Asian culture, said one of the reasons many Japanese and people in other parts of Asia resisted efforts to remove the constraints in Japan's Constitution was because "Japanese nationalists often downplayed, or even denied, the atrocities committed by their forebears".

"Politicians who prayed at Tokyo's Yasukuni Shrine for the souls of dead soldiers (including convicted war criminals) were not trusted to revise Japan's postwar pacifism. That includes Abe (former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe), but also Takaichi, who visited the shrine before she became prime minister," Buruma wrote in an article last month.

Zhu Feng, dean of the School of International Studies at Nanjing University, said Japan's pacifist constitution and Self-Defense Forces system "have not only been integral components of the region's security order for the past 80 years, but also a crucial sign of Japan's acceptance of its defeat in the war and of the postwar treatment".

"The current right-wing cabinet of Japan not only lacks a clear understanding of historical issues, but also seeks to abuse the Taiwan question to further bolster Japan's military capabilities as a so-called major power," he added.

As Japan persists in countering China's peaceful rise when radically advancing its military buildup, "it is now indeed a major threat to East Asia's security" 80 years after the end of World War II, Zhu warned.