Emperor Voices Japan’s ‘Regret’ for Korea Role

The leaders of Japan and South Korea staged an elaborate show of historical reflection--and Japanese contrition--on Thursday, making tense and carefully measured remarks aimed at putting an unhappy past behind the two East Asian neighbors.

The occasion may go down in the history books as the “apology summit.” South Korean President Roh Tae Woo began an emotionally charged visit after weeks of controversy over whether the Tokyo government would meet his demands that Emperor Akihito offer a clear apology for Japan’s brutal colonization of the Korean Peninsula earlier this century.

Akihito made a tightly restrained expression of “regret” during a state banquet in Roh’s honor.

“I think of the sufferings your people underwent during this unfortunate period, which was brought about by my country, and cannot but feel the deepest regret,” Akihito said, reading a text prepared by government officials.

It remains to be seen how well the emperor’s statement will be received in South Korea, where bitterness about the 1910-45 period of Japanese colonization remains strong.

Thousands of students demonstrated in three South Korean cities Thursday, shouting anti-Japanese slogans, burning Japanese flags and denouncing Roh’s trip as a sellout of national pride, news agencies reported. Some students charged that Roh’s visit is intended to deepen South Korea’s economic dependence on Japan and strengthen military ties among South Korea, Japan and the United States.

Although the emperor did not utter the word apology , his remarks were somewhat more vigorous than those made by his father, Hirohito--known since his death early last year as Emperor Showa--when former President Chun Doo Hwan visited Japan in 1984.

Akihito cited Hirohito’s statement to Roh: “It is indeed regrettable that there was an unfortunate past between us for a period in this century, and I believe that it should not be repeated again.”

The Japanese government went to great pains to avoid giving the impression that Akihito’s okotoba , or “august words,” would somehow render those of his father obsolete, or suggest that the late emperor was less than sincere in expressing his regret. Hirohito reigned from 1926 until his death at age 87; Koreans were forced into subservience, for the most part, under his name.

Hard-line officials in Tokyo also resisted the idea of Akihito making a lucid apology that might arouse Japan’s right wing or violate what one government official described as the mystique surrounding the imperial institution. They used the pretext of a “constitutional constraint” on the emperor’s “political role” to dampen the tone of his statement.

Roh, in response to Akihito’s banquet speech, also read from a prepared text:

“It is not possible to erase or forget historical facts,” he said. “Nevertheless, we must not remain bound up in memories. Our two nations must now forge a new era of friendship and cooperation based on proper historical perspective, putting the unfortunate past truly behind us.

“It is significant,” Roh continued, “that your majesty, the symbol of Japanese history and the new Japanese nation, has shown deep concern about this matter.”

Earlier in the day, Roh met with Prime Minister Toshiki Kaifu, who had an apology of his own to make.

“It is necessary to clearly and honestly articulate the realities of events that have so regrettably marred our past relations,” Kaifu said. “I would therefore like to express my feeling of sincere remorse and honest apology for the fact that there was a period in our history in which Japanese actions inflicted unbearable suffering and sorrow on the people of the Korean Peninsula.”

Kaifu reminded Roh of his government’s decision to expand legal rights for new generations of Korean residents in Japan, and he said Japan is considering a plan to donate about $26 million to a fund for medical treatment of Korean survivors of the atomic bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

Kaifu also told Roh that Japan has allocated about $660,000 in humanitarian support in this year’s fiscal budget for Korean laborers who were left behind on the island of Sakhalin at the end of World War II--nearly double the amount budgeted last year.