Japan's long battle over war apology

Japan risks forgetting the lessons of its militarist past if prime minister Shinzo Abe tampers with history, according to the man who made the country's definitive apology for the second world war.

In an interview with the Financial Times, former prime minister Tomiichi Murayama - who made a landmark declaration in 1995 on the 50th anniversary of the war's end - attacked Mr Abe's decision to make a new statement on the 70th anniversary this year.

Mr Murayama's intervention, which comes as Mr Abe prepares for speeches in Indonesia and the US where he is likely to road test his message on history, shows how the legacy of the war remains fiercely disputed in Japan.

The August proclamation by Mr Abe will be one of the most important moments in Asian diplomacy this year, with China and Korea watching for any sign of revisionism by a prime minister they regard as an unrepentant nationalist.

Mr Murayama said the objective of his 1995 statement - which describes Japan's "deep remorse" for its "colonial rule and aggression" - was less apology than the correct remembrance of history. He urged Mr Abe to retain those words.

"The goal is not to apologise. The important thing is our recognition of what we did in the past, and whether it was good or bad," said Mr Murayama. "This isn't a problem where you apologise to the Korean people or the Chinese people and it's done."

His remarks highlight the dispute between Japan's nationalists, who want to rehabilitate a war in which millions of Japanese died and recast it as a noble but failed effort in the national interest; and those such as Mr Murayama, who regard it as a futile and tragic mistake.

"It wasn't just the people of China and Korea who suffered great harm from our colonial rule and aggression, it was the people of Japan who suffered as well," he says.

"Their homes were bombed, and the bombing killed many people, and Hiroshima and Nagasaki became the first to suffer an atomic bomb. Therefore, if we look again at that war, it was a completely reckless war. We must not repeat it, must not repeat that error."

When he came to power in 2013, Mr Abe declined to accept the Murayama declaration in full, and quibbled about the definition of "aggression". He has since backed off that position and said his government upheld previous declarations, such as that of Mr Murayama, "in their entirety".

However, that reveals little about what Mr Abe himself will say. In a recent FT interview, Mr Abe said he wanted a statement reflecting on Japan's past 70 years as a liberal democracy, and preparing for the "80th anniversary and 90th anniversary and 100th anniversary".

The prime minister has set up a panel to advise him on the 70th anniversary, and people involved in the discussions said he was yet to decide exactly what to say. With no declaration likely to satisfy China and Korea, they said that Mr Abe's most important audience was in the US.

Hints at his approach may emerge later this month at the Bandung conference in Indonesia, an anti-colonial gathering of Asian and African leaders, and then when he addresses a joint session of Congress in Washington on April 29.

For Mr Murayama, the answer is to stick with the wording used by his government. Although a socialist, he led a grand coalition of left and right that included Mr Abe's Liberal Democratic party, and the declaration was his great achievement in office.

"If we water down, muddy or fail to touch on the problems of 'aggression' and 'colonial rule' in the Murayama declaration, then Korea and China will once again distrust and worry about Japan," he said.

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