Spotlight: 70 years on, Japan remains lost in historical quagmire

Japan, the major aggressor in the Asia-Pacific region since the 1930s, on Saturday commemorated the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, also known as the Victory over Japan Day in the West, but the nation remains lost in the quagmire of history 70 years on.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a hawkish historical revisionist, on Friday failed to atone for the country's wartime atrocities in his statement to mark the anniversary through intentionally not offering an apology and diluting the government's responsibilities for its past wrongdoings.

For seven decades, Japan has been trapped by the lingering historical disputes that prevent the nation from fully reconciling with the countries it victimized during the war, especially its two closest neighbors China and South Korea.

It is notable that in the 1990s, then Chief Cabinet Secretary Yohei Kono issued a fundamental and world-recognized statement apologizing for the Japanese Imperial Army's crimes against " comfort women," a Japanese euphemism for about 200,000 women who were forcibly recruited as sex slaves in military-run brothels and then Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama in his 1995 landmark statement offered a prevailing "heartfelt apology" and "deep remorse" for Japan's wartime wrongdoings.

But the period passed and its political pioneers lost their reign as the dominant thought-makers as Japanese politics deviated further and further to the right, as the society's memory of the nations' wartime wrongdoings was allowed, or even indoctrinated to fade by political revisionists.

Abe was an opponent of the issuing of the Murayama Statement in 1995. The prime minister, along with about half of his Cabinet ministers and many lawmakers from his Liberal Democratic Party ( LDP), are openly affiliated with the country's biggest and most influential ultra-right nationalist group called Nippon Kaigi, or Japan Conference, which praises Japan's aggression, massacres and rapes of the victim countries as wars of liberation.

Nippon Kaigi has about 300,000 members all angling to revise the country's pacifist Constitution and calling for Japanese leaders to pay homage at the notorious Yasukuni Shrine that honors 14 convicted WWII Class-A war criminals among 2.5 million Japanese war dead who sacrificed for Japan's decades of expansionism.

Meanwhile, on individual levels, many Japanese WWII veterans still believe that Japan had never launched acts of aggression against other countries since they were establishing the so-called "Great East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere" in helping Asian countries' liberation.

Kaname Harada, Japan's last surviving Zero fighter pilot in WWII, in his interview with Xinhua said that Japan never waged a war of aggression against China as Japan "entered" Manchuria aimed at helping develop the region. He denied the occurrence of the well-documented Nanjing Massacre and challenged the justice of the Tokyo tribunal.

The 99-year-old now is spending his twilight years giving public speeches calling for peace and stating that the war made him the world's worst man and that he resents war, yet in his speeches he agrees with Japanese leaders' Yasukuni visits and the "Great East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere."

Harada is a reflection of the Japanese society, in which most of its members oppose war but lack a sufficient understanding of the past. They pretty much believe in what the government is saying but seldom question whether the government is right or wrong, even though obvious debates between Japan and its neighboring countries on historical issues are presented in front of them.

"In Japanese culture senior people, or the state authorities, are thought of as fundamentally never making mistakes and the national policies are obviously never mistaken," Takeo Sato, a historical professor of Takushoku University, told a press conference Monday, adding it still remains a big problem in the Japanese society.

Abe himself, who never skips making offerings to the notorious shrine during its festivals, visited Yasukuni in person in late 2013 and never prevents his Cabinet ministers and LDP lawmakers from paying homage to the symbol of Japan's past militarism. However, such moves are not only considered as provocative acts by victim countries, but also hurt domestic war victims.

Mitsuru Mita, 86, was enrolled in the Japanese army in April 1945 and was trained to be a suicide bomber months before Japan's defeat. Talking about Yasukuni, Mita said the enshrined war criminals were the culprits who ordered Mita and his fellows to die in the war.

"For the military leaders, soldiers' lives had nothing to do with them. They issued orders but never went to the battlefield and never tasted the bitter experiences of war themselves," Mita told Xinhua in a recent exclusive interview, adding that " civilians became mere sacrifices since they did not cherish life."

Since the 14 Japanese war criminals were secretly enshrined in Yasukuni in 1978, Mita has never visited the shrine. "It is unnecessary for me to pay visits to the Yasukuni Shrine and I will never visit it," Mita said.

In a recent editorial, Yuriko Koike, an LDP lawmaker who served as defense minister during Abe's 2007 premiership and was a Yasukuni visitor, urged Japan's neighbors to reconcile with Japan, saying "forgiveness benefits everyone."

German Chancellor Angela Merkel acknowledged during her visit to Japan in March that Germany's reconciliation with neighboring countries came from the victim countries' "big gestures," but said that more importantly "there was the acceptance in Germany to call things by their name."

From words to deeds in the past 70 years, Japan has yet to fully admit the dark deeds it committed in the past.

Sato, who concentrates on comparative studies on how Japan and Germany reconciled with their victims in the postwar era, said that when talking about war responsibilities, Germany has admitted its responsibility as perpetrator, while Japan has emphasized how the war ended and how the country became a victim, especially after the nation was hit by two atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

"I don't accept that the use of the (atomic) bombs turned Japan from aggressor into victim. The victims were all those who suffered on both sides in the conflict," Hugh Cortazzi, former British ambassador to Japan, said in an editorial to mark the 70th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima.

"Japanese, however, need to bear in mind that if the Nazis or the Japanese military had plumbed the secrets of creating a bomb they would not have hesitated to use such a terrible weapon against the Allies. They should also not forget that Japan's suffering was largely preceded by saturation bombing of cities in China, not least against Chongqing in May 1939."

Then Japanese leaders who could not accept the responsibility of Japan's defeat, however, "were prepared to see Japan and its civilization totally destroyed and sacrifice the lives of millions of Japanese people" and they were "indirectly at least responsible for the tragedies of Hiroshima and Nagasaki," the former envoy said.

In Nagasaki city, Mayor Tomihisa Taue, in his address at the commemorative event of the atomic bombing, asked the Japanese younger generation not to push wartime experiences told by the older generation aside since what the elders experienced could happen again to the younger generation.

But still, for the Japanese younger generation, they are also facing difficulties in finding out what is the objective history among contradictory stories such as those told by Harada and Mita.

However, at a time when those who experienced the war are passing away, education, the major way to convey history to the younger generation, is a diminishing voice in an increasingly deaf society, becoming more so by powerful and publicly boisterous rightwing lobbies, intent on rewriting the history books, chapter and verse.

Hence, it's easy to imagine that with the ongoing manipulation of historical perception, the fires of historical issues and nationalism will be stoked among the Japanese young generation against their neighboring countries for, maybe, another seven decades, which could, fatefully, one day lead to fire being fought with fire. Endi