For over a year, Asia watchers waited to see what Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe would say on the 70th anniversary of Japan’s World War II surrender. When Aug. 15 arrived, he opted both to uphold his predecessors’ apologies and to send a clear warning: Japan today is committed to upholding global order while China is intent on subverting it.
Mr. Abe’s statement used Japan’s past aggression to call attention to Beijing’s current trajectory. In doing so, it sought to close one chapter of history and start writing another.
Mr. Abe faithfully repeated the formal Japanese terms for “apology” and “aggression,” keywords that then-Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama included in his 1995 apology on the 50th anniversary of the war’s end. Yet he also made clear that Japan cannot be expected to make eternal apologies, noting that over 80% of its current population was born after the war and had nothing to do with Japan’s aggression. To soften this statement, Mr. Abe fully accepted that the Japanese “must squarely face the history of the past.”
The full text of this article will be posted on Monday, August 31.
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