Feature: Social indifference in Japan to wartime past adds to precarious future

When asked about what Aug. 15 represents, 30-year-old salesgirl Ariko hesitated a moment and said with a smile "it is memorial day for the end of the war, I've been taught that in school."

"I know it is an important day, but that's all. I have no motivation to deepen my knowledge about it after I began working," Ariko told Xinhua.

In Japan, Aug. 15 is usually known as the "memorial day for the end of the war." The official name for the day, however, is "the day for mourning of war dead and praying for peace." This official name was adopted in 1982 by an ordinance issued by the Japanese government.

At 7 a.m. Beijing time (2300 GMT) on Aug.15, 1945, China, the United States, the United Kingdom, and the Soviet Union simultaneously released the announcement of Japan's unconditional surrender at the end of World War II.

Compared to "surrender" and "defeat", "the end of the war" is obviously a neutral expression, which only represents the fact that the war ended.

At the former Nazi concentration camp of Sachsenhausen in Germany, facts and data of Nazi war crimes are exhibited. Narrow and dark cells, crematoriums used for mass killing, and gas chambers are all well preserved.

But in Japan, though the Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima reproduces the horrible and miserable scenes of the U.S. atomic bombing in 1945, the true cause of the bombing has seldom been mentioned.

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.

Yokohama resident Keiko Syono, who is past retirement age, told Xinhua that "for people over 80 years old, Aug. 15 is an unforgettable day. That generation has experienced the bloody and horrible war, and is unwilling to see their children go to war."

But regarding the question as to who should take responsibility for the war and whether the war waged by Japan is right or wrong, she said few people around her talked about it, except some politicians and constitutional scholars.

"This issue is complicated, it is difficult for people nowadays to truly understand what people in those days thought at that time," said Syono, adding that "it was an action taken by the country of Japan at that time and that it is inappropriate to let any individuals take responsibility."

"The war has passed, there's no need to investigate the issue," she claimed, stressing that "however, Japan should pursue a peaceful road of development in the future."

Is it, indeed, not necessary to investigate past historical responsibilities? In this regard, Germany has set a good example.

Since the Nuremberg trials were held in the German city of the same name over 70 years ago, Germany has still been investigating responsibility for war crimes, and is earnestly racing against time.

The Nuremberg trials were a series of military tribunals, held by the Allied forces after WWII, which were most notable for the prosecution of prominent members of the political, military, judicial and economic leadership of Nazi Germany, who planned, carried out, or otherwise participated in the Holocaust and other war crimes.

This year, three people aged over 90 are to stand trial for their participation in the massacre of Jewish people. These trials aim to seek justice from "even those who are least involved in Nazi crimes," and "let the last survivors tell the truth," said historian Werner Lenz.

"Japan should learn from Germany. Through thorough reflection on history, Germany has been able to reconcile with France and other neighboring countries," said 83-year-old Japanese resident Takeji Hashimura.

"What Japan is currently doing is regrettable," said Hashimura.

Since the mid-1950s when Shinzo Abe's maternal grandfather Nobusuke Kishi held the position of Japanese prime minister, some people in Japan have begun to whitewash its wartime history of aggression, said Liu Jiangyong, a professor of Tsinghua University.

"Until now, every time when Japanese school text books are amended, there is retrogression on historical issues," said the professor, underscoring the validity of former German President Richard von Weizsacker's famous speech, in which he said "those who don't want to remember past inhumanity will be vulnerable again to new dangers of contagion".

Japanese people's ignorance of history makes them easy to be duped by the Abe administration's increasingly right wing, revisionist stance. This has provided a malleable social backdrop for his successful push for military expansion and passage of a new security law that allows Japanese troops to fight abroad even if Japan itself is not under attack.

With the gradual loss of the objective facts of Japan's war of aggression in Japanese society, the possibility for Abe to achieve his ambition of getting rid of the postwar system is increasing, which includes his long-held goal of revising the country's pacifist constitution and scrapping war-renouncing Article 9 and turning Japan's Self-Defense Forces into a conventional army. This will make it likelier for Japan to be involved in war again, all of which are a danger for its Asian neighbors' security and world peace.

Every year, Japan commemorates the Aug. 15 anniversary, and every year there's hot debate on "war and peace." For the good of Japan, its people, its neighbors and the world, the nation must not only remember its own suffering and lives lost, but remain forever cognizant of the fact that Japan itself was perpetrator first and victim of its own actions thereafter.

Only through deep, honest reflection on its wartime aggression and the immeasurable misery and suffering this brought to millions of innocent lives and through sincere regret and apology, can Japan ever hope to adhere to a peaceful road ahead. Endit