Abe Statement Set to Face History?

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe said Friday his government will make efforts to provide a sufficient amount of funding for the development of Okinawa Prefecture for fiscal 2016, which starts in April next year, according to the Jiji Press. The most controversial issue regarding Abe’s statement has been whether he will uphold the key words of the Japan’s “gold standard” apology, the Murayama statement.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe bows in front of the Peace Prayer statue before delivering a speech during the during the 2015 Nagasaki Peace Ceremony at the Nagasaki Peace Park, in Nagasaki, southwestern Japan, August 9, 2015.

Abe is expected to repeat past expressions of “deep remorse” but his conservative allies are opposed to any fresh apology. The panel, however, did not reach a consensus on the definition of aggression, although members shared views on other issues, said co-chairman Shinichi Kitaoka, president of the global University of Japan and an expert on diplomacy and history.

But it has been suggested he could still anger China and South Korea by shifting the focus away from his country’s wartime conduct.

“I believe everyone is taking note of Japan’s way of dealing with (the situation)”, Taiwan’s foreign minister, David Lin, said Monday in response to a question on whether his ministry has information about the speech in advance and what it hopes Abe will say.

In October, he denied Japan’s enslavement of hundreds of thousands of women to provide sex to its soldiers during World War II, enraging neighboring South Korea and China. All signs are that Abe will not say what needs to be said because he seeks to end what revisionists deride as Japan’s apology diplomacy and masochistic history. From these accounts of Japan’s victimization, the report abruptly veers to discussion of Japanese colonial rule: “In the colonies, Japan acted counter to the tide of self-determination”.

Japan “caused much harm to various countries, largely in Asia, through a reckless war”, the 38-page report said. There is a churlishly condescending tone toward Korean criticism of Japan’s desultory reckoning of colonial subjugation of the peninsula 1910-45, with repeated assertions that South Korean leaders have been too emotional and irrational.

The source states that the current draft of the statement to go out at the end of this week will include terms like 痛切な反省 (tsūsetsu na hansei, “feelings of deep remorse”) and 植民地支配 (shokuminchi shihai, “colonial rule”), as well as お詫び (owabi, “apology”) and 侵略 (shinryaku, often meaning “invasion” and in previous statements translated as “aggression”). It also acknowledged Japan’s military aggression before and during World War II, and referred to the responsibilities of the government and military leaders of the time.

The inclusion of the words would also satisfy demands from the US, which has called on Japan and its neighbours to overcome bitter rows over their war legacy.

“The statement added: “Only by doing this can Japan realise genuine reconciliation with its neighbouring countries in Asia”.