Spotlight: World intellectuals urge Japan to rethink past for peaceful future

As Saturday marks the 70th anniversary of Japan's surrender in World War II, international experts have criticized the Japanese government for denying history and trumpeting rightist policies, urging it to reflect on its past to ensure a peaceful future.

In a statement issued Friday, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, a well-known historical revisionist, mentioned previous governments' apologies, but dodged offering an outright apology of his own.

Since Abe took office for the second time in 2012, Japan has eased its weapon export rules, increased military spending, weakened civilian control over the Self-Defense Forces, and pushed controversial security bills and amendments to its pacifist Constitution.

Sarah Hyde, a senior lecturer in the politics of Japan at University of Kent, wrote in an article that Japan's "slow crawl toward militarization has gathered pace, with Shinzo Abe pushing through new security laws and potentially rewriting sections of the Constitution that outlaw the use of force."

"Japan has shown no intention of apologizing for its acts in World War II and its pre-war aggression into neighboring countries," Hyde said.

"And most worrying of all, in contrast with Germany, Japan has historically offered postwar generations of students very little education on its conduct in the war," she added.

"The Abe government is making no effort to improve Japanese war education 70 years on, or to flesh out the radically stripped-down memory of Japan's actions," Hyde said.

If things stand, she warned that Japan's relations with its neighbors "are set to keep festering."

Gu Xuewu, director of the Center for Global Studies of Bonn University, said the sincerity of Abe shown in his statement deserves a big question mark.

Abe did not dig the reason why Japan started the aggressive war and simply attributed the economy to the main factor leading to the war, without mentioning that it was militarism and national supremacy that pushed Japan into the abyss of war, he said.

It seems that it still will take a long time for Japan to reflect on the reasons that started the war, Gu said.

Pierre Picquart, a China expert at the University of Paris-VIII, said that Abe's avoiding apologizing would negate the "irrefutable historical facts" and be disrespectful to the innocent people killed or abused during the Japanese aggression before and during World War II.

"The reconciliation of Japan with China and other countries that have been humiliated and attacked several times by Japan must go through a sincere apology and a peaceful attitude by Shinzo Abe," Picquart said.

Dennis Halpin, visiting scholar at the U.S.-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University, said that Abe's assertion that future generations of Japanese people, who were not even born during the war, should not be burdened with future apologies to be a cause of concern "indicates a possible lack of understanding of the flow of history."

"We can never forget the horrific crimes against humanity of the Axis powers during the Second World War. The Japanese people should not be asked to forget either so that it never happens again," Halpin said.

In the view of Davide Rossi, a historian and director of Italy's Institute of History and Philosophy of Contemporary Thought, Japan's actions are characterized by an idea of "Japanese superiority" which has led it "to be the natural ally of European fascism and to practice a form of authoritarian and particularly brutal imperialism."

"It is evident that if Japan admitted its responsibility, this would be crucial to strengthening peace and cooperation with China," Rossi said. Endi