TOKYO — Using the carefully chosen words that govern reckonings with Japan’s militarist past, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reiterated Japan’s official remorse for the suffering it inflicted during World War II on Friday, on the eve of the 70th anniversary of the war’s end.
But in a potentially contentious break with previous expressions of contrition by Japanese leaders, Abe did not offer a new apology of his own.
In a nationally televised address, he described feelings of “profound grief” and offered “eternal, sincere condolences” for the dead. He said Japan had inflicted “immeasurable damage and suffering” when it “took the wrong course and advanced along the road to war.”
The decision to draw the line on new expressions of remorse, a product of months of deliberation, appeared to reflect what Abe and many of his countrymen see as an endless and enfeebling cycle of apologies for decades-old offenses.
Abe sought to do so while still addressing lingering historical resentment in China and South Korea, nations that bore the brunt of Japan’s often brutal empire building in the first half of the 20th century.
“Japan has repeatedly expressed feelings of deep remorse and heartfelt apology for its actions during the war,” Abe said. “Such positions articulated by previous Cabinets will remain unshakable into the future.”
But he added that there was a limit to the number of times Japan can apologize.
“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,” Abe said. It is enough, he added, “to inherit the past, in all humbleness, and pass it on to the future.”
Abe has long sought to break with what conservatives call Japan’s “masochistic” approach to addressing history. Apologies dating to the 1990s have not prevented recurring feuds with China and South Korea, which have their own reasons, political analysts note, for keeping alive public animosity toward Japan.
Yet Abe has also sown doubts about his own commitment to the forthright reckoning with the past that he endorsed on Friday. He has appointed unapologetic revision-ists to high-profile public posts, including at the national public broadcaster, NHK, and paid visits to the controversial Yasukuni shrine, where wartime Japanese leaders who were hung for war crimes are enshrined along with millions of fallen soldiers and sailors.
Jennifer Lind, an expert on Asia’s history disputes at Dartmouth College, said Japan had acknowledged past wrongdoings more frequently and candidly than any other country. Abe, for all his flaws as a messenger, is “trying to bring what he sees as balance back to the historical discussion,” she said.
In an initial commentary published online, China’s official Xinhua news agency said Abe’s speech “trod a fine line with linguistic tricks” and was insincere.