From pine root oil to rare earth mud: Japan's self-deceptive 'information cocoons'

Recently, the Ministry of Commerce of China issued an announcement adding 20 Japanese entities to its export control list. Among them is Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Shipbuilding Co., a key contributor to Japan's ongoing military buildup. Another 20 entities were placed on a watch list.

This move represents a precise and forceful countermeasure against Japan's continued violation of its Peace Constitution and its military expansion. Most of these enterprises are core players in Japan's military-industrial and manufacturing fields, meaning the restrictions hit Japan's vital sectors.

It is interesting that the Japanese government and mainstream media have clearly been downplaying or dismissing the impact of China's measures — whether deliberately or not.

Arrogant rhetoric has also spread online, and it is not the first time. In response to China's earlier restrictions on rare earth exports and travel advisories on Japan, Tokyo and its media either claimed these moves had "minimal impact" or hyped that "Japan has long secured alternatives".

A glance at the comment sections under related articles on Yahoo! News Japan reveals an unsettling trend. The most-liked comments are filled with triumphalist rhetoric: many Japanese netizens "celebrated" China's export controls as "a chance for Japan to fully decouple from the Chinese supply chain". One comment claiming "China's sanctions will only accelerate the withdrawal of Japanese firms — China will ultimately reap what it sows" garnered tens of thousands of likes. Some extreme voices even called for "a total ban on Chinese nationals entering Japan" and "the expulsion of Chinese residents".

This seemingly collective self-deception in public opinion is no fleeting outburst of emotion. Rather, it reflects a deep-seated pathology entrenched in Japanese society.

The narrative logic — downplaying dilemmas, whitewashing failure and shielding the truth — was pushed to the extreme more than 80 years ago by the Imperial General Headquarters during World War II. What sustains this absurd logic today is Japan's enduring "information cocoons".

From "Imperial Headquarters Announcements" to the "pine root oil scam"

During World War II, the propaganda of the Imperial General Headquarters served as the prototype for Japan's information cocoons.

In the Battle of Midway in June 1942, Japan suffered a devastating defeat: four fleet carriers — Akagi, Kaga, Sōryū, and Hiryū — were sunk, 332 warplanes destroyed, and more than half of the Combined Fleet's combat capability lost. Strategic initiative in the Pacific shifted decisively to the United States.

Yet this seemingly undeniable defeat was spun as an "overwhelming victory" in the "Imperial Headquarters Announcement", which falsely claimed that Japan had sunk two US carriers and one cruiser, and shot down 120 warplanes, while losing only "one fleet carrier, one cruiser and aircraft".

To maintain the lie, the military locked up the surviving officers and sailors, and even staged victory parades in Tokyo to drown the truth with revelry.

In the later stages of the Pacific War, US forces cut off Japan's oil supply routes from Southeast Asia. Japan's home islands faced severe oil shortages: warplanes and warships had no fuel, military production nearly ground to a halt and the fantasy of a "decisive home-island battle" teetered on collapse.

In response, the Imperial General Headquarters launched the "Pine Root Oil Campaign", claiming that aviation fuel could be extracted from pine roots, and declaring that "a million pine roots will sustain the decisive battle".

In reality, pine root oil has an extremely low octane rating and never met aviation fuel standards. By the time Japan surrendered, this nationwide effort had still not produced fuel for warplanes. Yet the Imperial General Headquarters continued to feed the public hollow promises through reports of "technological breakthroughs", concealing the truth of resource exhaustion and inevitable defeat.

History repeats: From pine root oil to seabed rare earths

The past echoes in the present. In response to China's rare earth export controls, Japan has dusted off the same script — this time swapping "pine root oil" for "seabed rare earth mud".

In recent years, the Japanese government and mainstream media have repeatedly hyped rare earth mud deposits near Minamitorishima, claiming the seabed holds over 16 million tons of rare earth — enough to meet Japan's demand for centuries. They suggest commercial mining is imminent, and that Japan will soon be free from reliance on Chinese rare earths.

Yet like pine root oil, this "trump card" exists only on paper. The Minamitorishima rare earth deposits lie at depths exceeding 5,000 meters, making extraction extraordinarily difficult. Costs could reach tens of thousands of dollars per ton — dozens of times higher than China's export prices — rendering commercial exploitation completely unfeasible.

More than a decade after the discovery, Japan has yet to produce a single ton of commercially viable rare earths. By touting this seabed mud, Japan is merely whistling in the dark — a self-deceptive act to soothe domestic opinion while evading reality.

Distorted and alienated perceptions of China

What is really alarming is that this narrative inertia has long since spread from wartime propaganda into contemporary Japanese society — with perceptions of China becoming the most distorted domain. Japan has built itself an all-encompassing cognitive blockade against China, fostering an unrealistic and deeply paranoid narrative that is virtually unparalleled even among Western bloc countries.

Japanese media have developed a reflexive paradigm of "negativity first, opposition always". Coverage of China in Japan's six major newspapers and broadcasters such as NHK is overwhelmingly negative, with a frequency far exceeding that of Western outlets like the BBC, Reuters and AFP.

Content related to China's poverty alleviation and scientific and technological innovation is almost entirely absent from Japan's mainstream discourse. Even in sectors where China leads — such as new energy vehicles, photovoltaics and high-speed rail — Japanese media deliberately frame the narrative around negative tropes like "copying Japanese technology" and "low-price dumping", refusing to acknowledge China's advancements and systematically obscuring the reality of its development.

The 2026 Munich Security Conference annual report includes a chart on "the degree to which countries recognize China and the US as technological powers". It shows that most countries regard both China and the United States as the world's top two technological powers — some believe China is only slightly behind the US, while others, such as South Africa and Germany, even consider China to be somewhat more advanced.

Against this backdrop, Japan stands out as a stark outlier — the most distinctive case on the chart — laying bare its delusional, distorted, and unrealistic perceptions of China.

Years of comprehensive information blockades and hype have kept Japanese public perception of China among the most negative in the developed world. According to the Cabinet Office of Japan's "Public Opinion Survey on Diplomacy" for more than a decade, over 80 percent of respondents have expressed "no sense of closeness" to China — far higher than comparable figures for the US, Germany, the UK and other Western countries.

Absurdly, the vast majority of Japanese holding negative views of China have never visited the country or engaged with real Chinese society; their perceptions are shaped almost entirely by a constructed illusion of a "negative China".

From the "Imperial Headquarters Announcements" and pine root oil, to hyped Minamitorishima rare earth mud, and finally to the all-encompassing information cocoons about China, Japan has never learned to face reality or confront history squarely.

When the walls of these cocoons are inevitably shattered by reality, all self-deception and public opinion whitewashing will ultimately become historical lessons paid for at a heavy cost.

The author is an international affairs commentator.

The views don't necessarily reflect those of China Daily.

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