Japan’s Apology: Late and Too Little : Statement on war leaves many unsatisfied

The response from many of Japan’s former adversaries to Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama’s personal statement of “deep remorse” and “heartfelt apology” for past Japanese colonial rule and aggression has been much like the response to a brief shower after a long drought: It’s welcome but it’s less than satisfying because it does little to deal with the fundamental problem.

That problem, as it continues to be perceived throughout much of Asia and the Pacific 50 years after the end of World War II, is that Japan still has not faced up to the full implications of its militant expansionism in the first half of this century or accepted full responsibility for the atrocities and hardships that it inflicted on so many. There have been many opportunities over the years for Japan to write a last chapter to the Pacific war, none of greater symbolic importance than this week’s 50th anniversary. Once again, the opportunity was missed.

Murayama of course deserves credit for going further than any Japanese leader before him to address questions of responsibility arising from Japan’s expansionist policies. He has uttered the unutterable, apologizing where his predecessors could bring themselves only to express regret about an era whose crimes they almost always alluded to in only the most circumspect ways.

His statement was approved by all three parties of his shaky coalition government (though the conservative Liberal Democrats also made a point of praising Japan’s “war heroes”). Yet the Murayama statement was cast wholly in personal terms: “I express . . . my feelings . . . and state my heartfelt apology.” How much more meaningful and powerful an official apology would be if it came on a vote of the full Parliament and with an explicit endorsement from Emperor Akihito, the embodiment of national continuity and the son of the wartime Emperor Hirohito.

The domestic political considerations that stand in the way of a full and candid acknowledgment of past abuses seem certain to shrink as the generation with direct memories of the war disappears. Encouragement certainly can be taken from the recent poll that found more than half of all Japanese agreeing that their country had not done enough to atone for what it did in history’s costliest conflict. That view is, naturally, echoed in those countries most severely affected by Japan’s aggression: Korea, China, the Philippines.

Peace now prevails between Japan and its former adversaries. But it may be another generation before real understanding and reconciliation can be achieved.