Japanese emperor expresses ‘deep remorse’ at WWII memorial service

South Korean President Park Geun-hye said Saturday that the Friday speech by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe expressing deep remorse for Japan’s wartime actions had fallen short of Seoul’s expectations.

Mr Abe’s remarks – in which, despite expressing his “utmost grief” for the “damage and suffering” Japan inflicted during the Second World War, he said future generations should not be “predestined to apologise” – had already reopened wounds.

While Abe, who has said he wants to fix ties with China and South Korea, did not visit Yasukuni in person, two of his cabinet ministers did along with the LDP’s policy chief, Tomomi Inada.

Tomomi Inada, policy chief of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party; Haruko Arimura, minister in charge of female empowerment and gender equality; and internal affairs minister Sanae Takaichi paid a visit to the war-linked Yasukuni Shrine in Tokyo’s Chiyoda Ward.

The MFA also noted that Mr Abe had said that “Japan should squarely face the past, take the lessons of history deeply and make all efforts for peace and prosperity”. Japan marked Saturday the 70th anniversary of the end…

Japan invaded China and several Southeast Asian countries, but Abe among others has questioned whether that qualifies as “aggression”.

“Instead of offering an unambiguous apology, Abe’s statement is rife with rhetorical twists… dead giveaways of his deep-rooted historical revisionism, which has haunted Japan’s neighborhood relations”, the Xinhua article says.

Visits by Japanese politicians to Yasukuni enrage neighbouring nations, which view them as an insult and painful reminder of now-pacifist Japan’s history.

The lack of sincerity in Abe’s statement was a far cry from that of his predecessor Tomiichi Murayama two decades ago, a commentary carried by the People’s Daily read Saturday, exactly 70 years after Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s surrender on August 15, 1945.

South Korean media reaction to Abe’s speech was largely negative, with the largest-circulation Chosun Ilbo newspaper accusing the Japanese premier of wrapping his message of regret over past aggressions inside a shell of justification.

The soft-spoken emperor has urged Japan not to forget the suffering of the war and tried to promote reconciliation with Asian countries. “We have the responsibility to inherit the past, in all humbleness, and pass it on to the future”.

In the statement, he also made an apparent reference to foreign wartime prostitutes for the Japanese army, though he avoided the question of whether the so-called “comfort women” were forced into the work, a hotly disputed issue with South Korea. She said she hoped Japan “soon and properly” resolved issues regarding women’s “honour and dignity”. History can’t be hidden and it remains alive through the testimonies of survivors who are still with us today.

Japanese Prime Minister stops sort of an apology for his country’s actions in WWII.