The ways Japan has said sorry to its neighbours over the past
Agence France-Presse
Tokyo, April 11, 2005
Japan's wartime past haunts its relations with its neighbours 60 years later, with Chinese protesters attacking Japanese interests and urging boycotts of its products and with passionate anti-Japanese sentiment in the two Koreas.
Japan occupied the Korean peninsula and much of China up to 1945, during which imperial troops forced thousands of women into sexual slavery and in 1937 carried out a massacre in the Chinese city of Nanjing.
At the root of the current tensions are perceptions among many Chinese and Koreans that Japan has not atoned for its wrongdoing.
Herewith some of the key statements by Japan on its past:
- June 1965: Japan establishes diplomatic relations with South Korea. Tokyo gives Seoul 800 million dollars in loans and grants. Seoul waives the right to compensation of Koreans who suffered under Japanese rule.
- September 1972: Japan normalizes relations with China. A joint communique says: "Japan is keenly conscious of its responsibility for the serious damage inflicted in the past on the Chinese people through war and deeply regrets it." China has refused compensation by Japan.
- May 1990: Emperor Akihito, the son of wartime emperor Hirohito, says during a banquet for visiting South Korean president Roh Tae-Woo: "I think of the sufferings your people underwent during this unfortunate period, which was brought about by my country, and cannot but feel deep regret."
Then premier Toshiki Kaifu goes further in his summit with Roh: "I would like to take this opportunity to express my sincere remorse and apology for Japan's acts that made people on the Korean Peninsula suffer unbearable agony and sorrow during a period in the past." He notably did not use the words "colonial rule" or "aggression."
- October 1992: Emperor Akihito on a historic visit to Beijing tells a banquet hosted by president Yang Shangkun: "In the long history of relationship between our two countries, there was an unfortunate period in which my country inflicted great sufferings on the people of China. I deeply deplore this."
- November 1993: Morihiro Hosokawa, the first Japanese prime minister in more than 37 years not to come from the Liberal Democratic Party, says on a visit to South Korea: "I would like to offer my heartfelt remorse and apology as assailants for the unbearable pain and sorrow people on the Korean Peninsula experienced when they were deprived of being able to learn their mother tongue and forced to change their names to Japanese ones and through the recruitment as comfort women, forced labor and various other ways."
- August 1995: In a landmark statement, prime minister Tomiichi Murayama - only the second socialist to head a Japanese government - apologizes on the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II.
"During a certain period in the not too distant past, Japan, following a mistaken national policy, advanced along the road to war, only to ensure 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 countries," Murayama says.
"In the hope that no such mistakes be made in the future, I regard, in a spirit of humanity, these irrefutable facts of history and express here once again my feelings of deep remorse and state my heartfelt apology."
- June 1996: Prime minister Ryutaro Hashimoto, in a meeting with South Korean president Kim Young-Sam, apologizes for sexual enslavement of "comfort women."
"Nothing injured the honour and dignity of your women more than this and I would like to extend words of soul-searching and apology from the bottom of my heart," Hashimoto says.
- October 1998: Prime minister Keizo Obuchi apologizes in a joint statement with South Korean president Kim Dae-Jung.
Obuchi says in the statement that Japan "sincerely recognized the historical fact that our country inflicted tremendous damage and suffering on the people of South Korea through the colonial rule during a certain period of the past and expressed deep remorse and a heartfelt apology over this."
Obuchi said later that he spoke on behalf of the Japanese government and Kim said the statement should settle the countries' troubles over their past.
- November 1998: Obuchi repeats Murayama's 1995 apology during a summit with Chinese president Jiang Zemin. The two countries issue a joint statement in which Japan expresses its "deep remorse" over its past.
© HT Media Ltd. 2005.