It’s just amazing that this is going on in 2015.  The panel advising Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on a highly sensitive statement to be delivered in a ceremony marking the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II is squabbling over how to describe Japan’s past military actions.

According to the latest public minutes, the committee of academics, journalists and business leaders can’t agree on the use of the word “aggression”. 

“As a result of Japan’s war in the 1930s through to 1945, many Asian countries became independent,” said International University of Japan President Shinichi Kitaoka, “But I think it is wrong to say that Japan fought the war for the emancipation of Asian countries.”  Kitaoka added, “Japan caused many casualties in Asia in its reckless warring.”

Most Japanese accept the historical record that their country was the aggressor in the Pacific Theater.  But right-wingers – some of whom are in Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s inner circle and opposing Kitaoka on the panel – cling to a revisionist narrative that says Imperial Japan’s actions were defensive and intended to liberate Asia from Western colonialists.

The rest of Asia disagrees with that, especially Japan’s closest neighbors in China and the Korean Peninsula.  Beijing and Seoul posit that Tokyo has not sufficiently atoned for World War II.  They insist that the current Japanese government must stand by the 1995 Murayama Statement that apologizes for the damage and suffering caused by Japan to its Asian neighbors. 

The prime minister who delivered that address, Tomiichi Murayama, was a soldier during World War II and knows of what he spoke.  The current PM was born to a wealthy, powerful family, and never served in the military.  Shinzo Abe is seen as a right-wing nationalist, and has frequently, and many say unnecessarily, irked his neighbors with statements that seem to absolve Japan’s war criminals.