The Perpetual Postwar: Japan’s Memory Trap

Since 1995, which marked the 50th anniversary of Japan’s acceptance of the Allied terms of surrender and the end of World War II, the Japanese government has established a tradition of issuing official statements every decade acknowledging its wartime wrongdoings and the suffering caused. However, it is becoming increasingly unlikely that such a statement will be released for this year’s 80th anniversary.

The likely suspension of this custom – which began with Socialist Prime Minister Murayama Tomiichi’s 50th anniversary statement, followed by Koizumi Junichiro’s for the 60th anniversary in 2005 and Abe Shinzo’s for the 70th in 2015 – appears to be linked to Prime Minister Ishiba Shigeru’s weak standing within the still predominantly conservative Liberal Democratic Party. His position has become even more precarious following the party’s defeat in the upper house election in July.

Although Ishiba was able to include the word “remorse” in his August 15 speech at the National Memorial Ceremony for the War Dead, that seems to be the extent of his willingness to exert political capital on the issue of historical memory. He has publicly stated that he would not issue a war-related statement that is approved by his Cabinet. Instead, he is reportedly considering a personal statement that would explore the institutional failures and lack of guardrails that allowed militarism to rise – rather than directly reflecting on Japan’s past misconduct.

Although close to 80 percent of the Japanese public agree that the prime minister should deliver some type of statement of reflection in this 80th anniversary year, Japanese conservatives as a whole – both right-wing members in the Diet and conservative opinion leaders – are adamantly opposed to it.

One reason stems from their enduring loyalty to Abe, who, in their view, marked an end to Japan’s endless streak of apologies. In the conservative view, these continued expressions of remorse prevent the public from taking pride in their history and tradition.

In 2015, a day before the 70th anniversary of Japan’s surrender, Abe released his statement. Amid domestic and international pressure, Abe’s statement on the war largely inherited the key components of the “position articulated by the previous cabinets”: repudiating “aggression” and “colonial rule” while reaffirming “deep remorse and heartfelt apology” for Japan’s excesses during war.

However, Abe still managed to insert a sentence that signaled to his base – and the world – that enough is enough: “In Japan, the postwar generations now exceed 80 percent of its population. We must not let our children, grandchildren, and even further generations to come, who have nothing to do with that war, be predestined to apologize.”

Japanese conservatives believe that Abe charted a course focused on looking forward rather than backward – a course they view as irreversible. Additionally, they harbor deep distrust toward Ishiba, especially regarding his handling of history. Ishiba has made candid admissions of Japan’s misdeeds during World War II in past interviews. Conservatives thus fear that an Ishiba statement might reverse course and compel Japan to shoulder the burden of apology once again.

From the start, Japanese conservatives never wanted the government to make an official statement admitting that Japan had conducted a war of “aggression.” Initially, when Murayama assumed power by forming a three-party coalition government that included the LDP – which shocked the political world, since Murayama’s Socialist Party had been the LDP’s main rival for decades – he did not intend to release a statement, but instead sought for the Diet to pass a resolution “Reflecting on past wars and expressing determination for future peace.” However, the Diet disappointed Murayama; more than half of its members were absent from the vote, protesting that the wording was either too overt or insufficiently clear regarding Japan’s admission of guilt. These circumstances compelled Murayama, who believed it was his duty, to deliver his statement.

The following lines are one of the memorable excerpts from the Murayama Statement:

During a certain period in the not too distant past, Japan, following a mistaken national policy, advanced along the road to war, only to ensnare the Japanese people in a fateful crisis, and, through its colonial rule and aggression, caused tremendous damage and suffering to the people of many countries, particularly to those of Asian nations.

The fact that a Cabinet-approved statement on an 80-year-old war is only a 30-year tradition speaks to how the Japanese public has grappled with its wartime memory. In retrospect, Mori Yoshiro, one of the Cabinet members who approved the Murayama Statement, noted in an oral history that there was significant reluctance among the veteran community and surviving families to admit that their close associates were implicated in a dishonorable war of aggression.

Whether Ishiba will – or can – issue a statement that focuses on “remorse” or “apology,” would likely have diplomatic consequences, particularly concerning South Korea and China. But Ishiba’s resolve to present his own statement concerning the domestic origins of the war is a road less taken, and one that has received little attention from the public.

Although the percentage of the Japanese population who lived through the war is shrinking, the ongoing backlash toward the Ishiba statement and the lack of public understanding of how Japan’s burgeoning democratic institutions failed to prevent militarism in the 1930s show that Japan has not truly emerged from its “postwar” period.