Why Japanese PM Shinzo Abe comes up short on WWII history and contrition

Editor’s Note: Jeff Kingston is Director of Asian Studies, Temple University Japan. He’s the author of “Asian Nationalism Since 1945.” The opinions expressed here are solely those of the author.

The statement by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe marking the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II will be parsed and dissected in detail over the coming months and years as its ambiguities and vagueness allow for varying interpretation.

It is like a Rorschach test, where different audiences will project different meanings based on what Abe said – and left unsaid – conveying what they want to hear and did not want to hear.

Within Japan opinions are divided along ideological lines – Abe enjoying the support of the right, and criticism from the left with the caveat that reactionaries were disappointed that he demonstrated any contrition at all.

Those on the left complained that he failed to clearly express a heartfelt, personal apology and it looked like he was just going through the motions. While Abe may have done just enough to satisfy critics in the United States, and Washington’s pro-Abe Japan hands are touting the statement’s merits, Beijing and Seoul are disappointed by what Abe left unsaid.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe gestures as he answers questions following his war anniversary statement that neighbouring nations will scrutinise for signs of sufficient remorse over Tokyo's past militarism at his official residence in Tokyo on August 14, 2015.

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As a leading revisionist, Abe has spent his entire career repudiating apology diplomacy and what he describes as masochistic history. He is a polarizing figure in Japan, a neo-con nationalist who has criticized the 1995 Murayama Statement for the past two decades and undermined the 1993 Kono Statement regarding responsibility for the so-called comfort women system.

In contrast to Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, who accepted Germany’s “everlasting responsibility,” for its actions during the same period, Abe conveyed perpetrators’ fatigue, avoiding offering his own apology and expressing hope that future generations of Japanese would not also be required to do so.

But calling for an end to apologies before Japan has embraced a forthright reckoning of its shared history with Asia is counterproductive.

A recent NHK poll indicated that 42% of Japanese support an apology for the war, while only 15% oppose such gestures. So Abe’s belief that Japan has done enough on the apology front is not driven by public sentiment.

The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum has collected thousands of drawings made by survivors of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima, Japan. The drawings document survivors' memories surrounding that horrible day. In this rendering, Hideo Kimura shows burned and screaming classmates. Some were trapped under heavy gates and houses. Others were in the river, holding onto a stone embankment.

This drawing by survivor Akira Onogi shows a woman pinned under a pillar from her collapsed house as deadly flames approach. Next to the woman, a sobbing girl pleads for help from neighbors. The neighbors couldn't move the pillar.

Chisako Sasaki drew this image of a girl at a window on the second floor of a burning house. Sasaki remembers the girl crying for help. "I can never forget," Sasaki said.

Mitsuko Taguchi is haunted by this scene, depicted in her drawing, of a dead mother and child who had fallen while trying to outrun flames. "Her hair was standing on end," Taguchi said. "She still protected her child under her breast, like a living person. Her eyes were open wide. I cannot forget that shocking sight."

Torazuchi Matsunaga remembered soldiers carrying children's corpses on stretchers to a temporary crematorium. "These children had been injured by the bomb and taken to the army hospital for treatment but had soon died," she said. "The hands and legs sticking out of the stretcher swung with the motion. My chest suddenly seized with emotion."

Survivor Asako Fujise drew this image of a bomb shelter that was being used as a makeshift hospital. It was "filled with moans and the smell of zinc oxide and Mercurochome mixed with sweat."

Sueko Sumimoto remembered a mother standing on a bridge. She was screaming her child's name while the bodies of dead students floated on the river below.

Hiroharu Kono drew a picture of her search for missing family members. Three days after the bombing, she arrived at where her house once stood. "Fires were still burning here and there, and the streets were so hot I could hardly get through," she said. After digging through a foot of dirt, Kono found the bones of her older brother, older sister and a 3-day-old baby who had all died in a fire. "I put my hands together and just prayed to Namu Amida Buddha," she said. "I wept and wept."

Not all the drawings depict bad memories. Masaru Shimizu remembers being given a few dozen frozen mandarin oranges by the military. "I gave some of them to relatives who were seriously injured by the atomic bomb," she said.

Soldiers had been trained not to give water to burn victims, thinking it would worsen their condition. Keiji Harada remembers girls asking her for water. "While I was rushing to get them water, a military policeman yelled at me to stop. When I remember, I deeply regret that I obeyed. I should have found a way to help them."

The memory of seeing two girls with blue-violet faces shocked Torao Izuhara so much that she never forgot it. Their faces were "swollen so badly that you couldn't tell whether their eyes were open or shut, and their skirts were ripped up right at the creases," Isuhara said. "Their faces were really even blacker than the drawing. They helped each other walk along, their shoulders joined together, their powerless legs somehow carrying them off towards the Otagawa River."

Like cattle, injured survivors were loaded into rail cars to escape the ruined city. "Most people were injured, and those with burns were slathered with white medicine," Kazuo Koya said. "There were so many bandaged people. With only the clothes on their backs, they waited under the blazing sun for departure."

Sumie Sasaki was fortunate enough to find a bit of beauty amid all the horror. "The stars were beautiful," she recalled. "My father gathered charred tin sheeting and broken planks and built us a shack over the burnt ruins of his company. One plant's tall smokestack remained standing, and it scared us at night. But the stars glittering all around the scary smokestack were so beautiful."

Drawings show haunting memories of Hiroshima

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Watered down

True, Abe went further than he has in the past in expressing contrition and noting the suffering Japan inflicted, but that is not saying much.

As a friend related, Abe’s statement is, “a watered-down version of the Yushukan – the military museum adjacent to Yasukuni Shrine – version of the road to war, a recognition that things were probably tough for a lot of women, a teeth-clenched repetition of stuff that earlier Prime Ministers said.” 

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Abe was vague precisely where he needed to be more specific and spoke of apology in the past tense. On wartime aggression, colonial rule and the controversial issue of comfort women, Abe dodged detailed and forthright acknowledgment of what Japan inflicted on Asians.

Afterwards former Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama complained that Abe’s statement did not clearly reflect or embrace the spirit of his historic 1995 statement that serves as the gold standard of Japanese mea culpa. Abe seems in a rush to turn the page on the past before it has been fully recognized.

READ: Forgotten faces: Japan’s comfort women  

While he made a circumspect effort to offer the olive branch to China, Seoul is exasperated with Abe’s roundabout and evasive comments. President Park Geun-hye said his speech left much to be desired and that you can’t hide history because it is alive in people’s memories.  Abe’s reference to the comfort women was excessively vague and there was little to assuage Korean sentiments.

At home, Abe hoped to offset his image as a war-mongering authoritarian by appearing reasonable on history issues and reiterating his support for continued peace and prosperity, but it is unlikely that he changed anyone’s mind.

Most Japanese oppose his new security legislation because he seems intent on undermining the Peace Constitution that has become intrinsic to national identity. They worry that Abe’s proactive pacifism will put Japan in harms way, and his statement and subsequent media appearances have done little to improve his image.

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Overall, Abe appeared unrepentant, outsourced contrition to his predecessors and failed the apology test. It is naïve to assume that an apology is the magic wand of regional reconciliation in northeast Asia, but equally naïve to think that it is not crucial to the process.

After eight months of Abe reducing expectations, his statement exceeded what many expected, but still fell short of what is necessary. Abe remains equivocal about Japan’s wartime past and therefore failed to overcome reservations about his views and leadership.

READ: Former Zero pilot laments Japan’s wartime past