Japan marks 80 years since WWII surrender amid fading memories

Japan commemorates 80 years since World War II surrender, paying tribute to over 3 million war dead. National ceremony contrasts with visits to the controversial Yasukuni Shrine, raising tensions with Asian neighbours and highlighting concerns over fading historical memory.

Tokyo: Japan is paying tribute to more than 3 million war dead as the country marks its surrender 80 years ago, ending the World War II, as concern grows about the rapidly fading memories of the tragedy of war and the bitter lessons from the era of Japanese militarism.

In a national ceremony Friday at Tokyo’s Budokan hall, about 4,500 officials and bereaved families and their descendants from around the country will observe a moment of silence at noon, the time when the then-emperor’s surrender speech began on Aug 15, 1945.

---

Just a block away at Yasukuni Shrine, seen by Asian neighbours as a symbol of militarism, dozens of Japanese rightwing politicians and their supporters came to pray.

Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba stayed away from Yasukuni and sent a religious ornament as a personal gesture instead of praying at the controversial shrine.

But Shinjiro Koizumi, the agriculture minister considered as a top candidate to replace the beleaguered prime minister, prayed at the shrine. Koizumi, the son of popular former Prime Minitser Junichiro Koizumi whose Yasukuni visit as a serving leader in 2001 outraged China, is a regular at the shrine.

Rightwing lawmakers, including former economic security ministers Sanae Takaichi and Takayuki Kobayashi, as well as governing Liberal Democratic Party heavyweight Koichi Hagiuda, also visited the shrine Friday.

The shrine honours convicted war criminals, among about 2.5 million war dead. Victims of Japanese aggression, especially China and the Koreas, see visits to the shrine as a lack of remorse about Japan’s wartime past.

As the population of wartime generations rapidly decline, Japan faces serious questions on how it should pass on the wartime history to the next generation, as the country has already faced revisionist pushbacks under former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and his supporters in the 2010s.

Since 2013, Japanese prime ministers stopped apologising to Asian victims, under the precedent set by Abe.

Some lawmakers’ denial of Japan’s military role in massive civilian deaths on Okinawa or the Nanking Massacre have stirred controversy.

In an editorial Friday, the Mainichi newspaper noted that Japan’s pacifist principle was mostly about staying out of global conflict, rather than thinking how to make peace, and called the country to work together with Asian neighbours as equal partners.