Should Prime Minister Abe Continue to Make Apologies for the Wrongs of Imperial Japan?

KBS World Radio has highlighted a Japanese daily’s editorial that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe should repeat apologies about the actions of Imperial Japan:

Japan’s Asahi Shimbun newspaper has called on Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s administration to express regret over the country’s past doings in order to improve relations with South Korea.

In an op-ed Saturday, the daily said that Korea should not be given the cold shoulder. It said the Abe administration is regarded as being passive in reflecting on Japan’s past and there lies the indelible distrust Korea has toward Japan.

The op-ed said the Abe government must again clarify its historical views related to the Korean Peninsula in an effort to defuse this distrust.

The commentary went on to propose holding talks for the Japanese government to express its view on history and also at the same time to discuss a renewed assessment by the Seoul government regarding the two countries’ 2015 agreement on the wartime sex slavery issue.

The newspaper cited past statements issued by top Japanese officials in 1993 and 2010 that acknowledged the forced nature of the sexual enslavement and apologized for Japan’s colonial rule of Korea.

The paper said that if Prime Minister Abe demonstrates an attitude respectful of these past statements, Tokyo can be more persuasive in demanding Seoul to keep its promises.

KBS World Radio

Now what the KBS World Radio article does not say is that the Asahi Shimbun editorial also said that Moon administration should honor past agreements signed between the two countries:

First, he should appreciate and honor the 2015 bilateral agreement on the comfort women issue negotiated by the leaders of the two countries to settle the issue “finally and irreversibly.”

The Moon administration’s argument that the agreement negotiated by then South Korean President Park Geun-hye is flawed does not justify its nullification. If a country breaks such a formal agreement with another, mutual trust cannot be maintained.

Asahi Shimbun

Essentially what the Asahi Shimbun editorial states is that each year the Japanese government should recognize the wrong doings of Imperial Japan and that South Korea should honor past agreements signed between the two countries.

This course of action will not work because South Korean leftists and even some on the right like having the anti-Japan issue available to deflect public attention from domestic political issues. For example right now the South Korean economy is doing poorly and the Moon administration’s engagement policy with North Korea is failing. Does anyone think it is any coincidence they are promoting anti-Japan issues right now?

The other problem with this course of action is that there is apology fatigue in Japan. Here is what a seperate editorial in the Asahi Shimbun had to say:

But Prime Minister Shinzo Abe again made no mention of such remorse in his speech at the memorial service this year. Abe once used the word in his speech at the ceremony for 2007, when he was serving his first tenure as prime minister.

Ever since Abe began his second stint as prime minister in 2012, however, he has stopped short of referring to Japan’s “remorse” over the war or the harm it caused to neighboring countries.

Instead, he has talked about his strong desire to allow young Japanese to stop apologizing for the past war. In his statement to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of the war, he said, “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.”

But we can build relations with other countries that no longer require such apologies on our part only if our political leaders, our representatives, keep demonstrating their commitment to facing up to dark chapters of our history and reflecting sincerely on lessons from history.

Asahi Shimbun

I think it is pretty clear that Prime Minister Abe is trying to normalize the status of Japan and not be a country that is continuously apologizing for the wrongs of Imperial Japan. He probably has correctly deduced that giving more apologies is not going to do anything to change the anti-Japan political dynamic in South Korea where their past apologies have been criticized as being insincere.

The Abe administration now is trying to take a Chinese like approach instead, with economic punishment to see if that will get the Moon administration to comply with past agreements. I guess we will see over time if this has any effect at changing the current political dynamics in both countries.