TOKYO — "If I went to the United States and was asked why Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, it would be useless. I couldn't answer. I don't know," said Hidenori Suzuki, 20, a freshman at Waseda University.
Suzuki blames Japanese education. But educational instruction is only part of the picture. Fifty years after the Pearl Harbor attack on Dec. 7, 1941, this country has still not come to grips with its past.
No Japanese leader has ever explicitly acknowledged Japan's responsibility for the war--or issued an unambiguous, heartfelt apology. And none has ever spoken specifically of the atrocities its troops committed, such as the Bataan Death March, the "Rape of Nanking" or massacres of Chinese in Singapore.
While textbooks no longer attempt to cover up Japan's actions by substituting such words as advance for aggression, they pay more attention to the suffering that Japan endured than to the suffering it inflicted.
Blame for the war is spread among the world's powers, even by some of Japan's most prominent officials, who see those other countries as equally wrongheaded imperialists of the era. If anyone in Japan was to blame, by some accounts, it was Japan's military leadership--never its average citizens.
To the Japanese, the war was a mistake, not a crime. And so, too, was the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki a mistake.
The war came to an "end." There is no mention of surrender.
It is only natural that the war is not a matter of common discussion here; two-thirds of the population was born after Japan's defeat. And yet there is no escape from the memories and strictures that war and defeat imposed.
Declarations of regret and pledges never again to become a military giant mark every visit by a Japanese prime minister to another Asian country.
Statements about the "unfortunate period of history" have become a ritual in dinner toasts by the emperor to visiting leaders of nations victimized by Japanese aggression or colonization.
Visits by Japanese leaders to pay homage to the war dead at Japan's equivalent of Arlington National Cemetery--the Yasukuni Shrine, where seven war criminals are among the honored dead--continue to stir controversy at home and protests abroad.
Hardly a week goes by without some group of Koreans or Taiwan Chinese or Indonesians or Filipinos demanding compensation for their war losses. Periodically, new evidence of wartime atrocities touches off another round of news items.
Still Being Resolved
Even now, Japan is negotiating a diplomatic conclusion to the remnants of war and colonialism with the Soviet Union and North Korea. A dispute over four northern islands the Soviets seized from Japan after World War II has prevented signing of a peace treaty with Moscow. And while Japan's 35-year colonial rule of the Korean Peninsula ended with defeat in 1945, Japan has settled accounts and established diplomatic relations only with South Korea.
For years after World War II, Japan's national flag and the national anthem--which had become symbols of militarism even to many Japanese--were shunned. Resistance to their use continues. Only last year were schools required to use the flag and anthem at ceremonies.
In Parliament, the war casts a shadow over debate to enact bills permitting the regular dispatch of Japanese troops overseas for the first time since 1945 for disaster relief and noncombat missions in U.N. peacekeeping operations.
In the United Nations, Japan is still classified, along with Germany and Italy, as an "enemy nation" and excluded from permanent membership in the Security Council.
Japan's reticence about acknowledging responsibility for the nation's prewar policy stems, in part, from memories of the late Emperor Hirohito and the continuing, deep respect for the emperor system.
"We were different from the Germans, who could be more explicit and articulate the mistakes made by Nazism and Hitler," said Takakazu Kuriyama, who retired as vice foreign minister last summer. "The Japanese have always been . . . afraid of (tying) the national responsibility . . . to the responsibility of the emperor himself.
"I don't think the experience of the war could ever be separated from the emperor--exactly because millions of people went to war and died, believing they were doing so for the emperor. None of them went to war for Tojo, you know," Kuriyama said, referring to Gen. Hideki Tojo, prime minister of the war Cabinet of 1941.
What's more, the Japanese see themselves as war victims. Citizens who feel little "responsibility" even for the actions of their present government blame the military for plunging the country into the war and making people suffer. Socialists and Communists have promoted such thinking to discredit Japanese capitalism and its chief defender, the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, which traces its roots to prewar conservatives.
