A specific set of institutions established after 1945 explains the continuing importance of the memory of World War II in Japanese domestic politics and foreign relations. Steven Benfell concludes that apologizing to wartime victims is not simply a question of remorse, but of institutional change in Japan.

Steven Benfell is Assistant Professor of Political Science at Western Michigan University. In 1997-1998 he was a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University's Weatherhead Center for International Affairs. His research focuses on nationalism and national identity, collective memory, and Japanese politics and international relations.

When he ascended to the Japanese premiership on April 26, 2001, Koizumi Junichiro seemed unlike any of his recent predecessors. Elected to the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) presidency without major factional support and largely because of his enormous personal popularity, Koizumi seemed to signal a new type of Japanese leader and a potential reformation of Japanese politics and political institutions. He both promised and seemed to embody change. During the race for the party presidency, Koizumi declared that, if elected, he would pay an official visit on the symbolically important day of August 15 to the Yasukuni Shrine, where Japan’s war dead (including convicted war criminals) are enshrined. Once he won the LDP presidency, Koizumi reaffirmed this commitment.

Koizumi’s boldness and candor drew criticism both within Japan and from the main targets of Japan’s past militarist aggression, especially the two Koreas and China. While other prime ministers had visited Yasukuni on August 15 or other days, most did so as “private citizens,” insisting that the visit was not intended as a political statement or as a reflection of government views about war responsibility. One previous prime minister, Nakasone Yasuhiro, had visited the shrine in his “official capacity” and succeeded in setting off a domestic and international firestorm, causing both Nakasone and his successors to avoid the symbolically provocative action throughout the late 1980s and the 1990s. Koizumi’s bold declaration therefore seemed to signal change in how the government – or at least the Koizumi administration – would address the thorny issue of Japan’s war responsibility. In contrast to the deliberate ambiguity of past premiers on the issue, Koizumi’s pledge suggested that his government would be forthright in addressing war responsibility, even in the face of inevitable criticism and possible harm to relations with Japan’s neighbors.

By August 15, however, it was clear that Koizumi’s statement on the issue was not a signal of a real change in the government’s approach to the “politics of apology.” Instead, it was yet another instance of a long-established pattern of forthright statements followed by cautious back-tracking, followed in turn by deliberate and carefully considered ambiguity. In the end, Koizumi did visit Yasukuni, but on the less symbolically loaded day of August 13 rather than the actual anniversary of the end of the war. And on August 15, Koizumi issued carefully worded statements that indicated “deep remorse” for the events of the past and “sincere condolences” to those who suffered because of those events. “We have caused great pain and suffering to other nations, particularly our Asian neighbors, during the war,” he said. Although Koizumi’s statements were meant to mollify Japan’s critics, the visit to Yasukuni (which appealed to a domestic right-wing constituency) counter-balanced any goodwill created by conciliatory rhetoric. In short, despite Koizumi’s initial boldness, his ultimate actions reaffirmed the deliberately ambiguous pattern of his predecessors, in which cautious conciliation is paired with actions that predictably provoke outrage from Japan’s neighbors.1 

A clear example of this pattern can be seen in the experience of Hashimoto Ryutaro, Koizumi’s chief rival in the April 2001 LDP presidential election and prime minister from 1996 to 1998. Hashimoto’s own statements and actions prior to his assumption of the premiership suggest a strong affinity with what may be called a “revisionist” position on the war. Like many who question both the ambiguity of official government statements and the “masochism” of progressives who call for more open and self-critical accounting of Japan’s imperialist past, Hashimoto resented moves toward open apologies and overtly opposed additional government-funded compensation for atrocities committed by Japanese forces. In 1993, when non-LDP prime minister Hosokawa Morihiro issued an unprecedented (for a sitting prime minister) statement that Japan’s war had been a “war of aggression” (shinryaku senso), Hashimoto strongly criticized the prime minister. While Hashimoto did not deny that Japanese actions in China and Korea had “contained elements of aggression,” he criticized Hosokawa’s statements for implying that only Japan had been aggressive (when, Hashimoto claimed, Western powers had acted with equal or greater aggressiveness), and for opening the door to myriad unjust reparation claims from self-defined “victims” of Japanese aggression.2  Moreover, Hashimoto had long aligned himself with the vehemently revisionist Japan Bereaved Families Association (Nihon Izokukai, or JBFA), even serving as president of the group while he was a sitting Diet member and a member of the cabinet. Hashimoto also visited the Yasukuni shrine with relative regularity, publicly trumpeting the interests and views of the JBFA and other revisionist groups. Based on this past, one could perhaps conclude that when prime minister, Hashimoto Ryutaro would promote a revisionist agenda with regard to Japan’s war responsibility.

Once he ascended to the premiership in January 1996, however, Hashimoto’s revisionist views softened (or appeared to soften), and his own statements and actions followed the ambiguous pattern of his predecessors rather than the provocative actions and statements one would expect of the president of the JBFA. Indeed, Hashimoto felt compelled to resign the presidency of the JBFA on his assumption of the office of prime minister. Rather than visit Yasukuni on August 15, as he had done previously as a Diet member and a sitting cabinet minister, Hashimoto visited in July, insisting that his visit was not “official” but “personal” and was in fulfillment of a childhood promise to an older friend who died in the war. Moreover, in his official statements on the anniversary of surrender, Hashimoto drew upon the already established rhetoric of ambiguity employed by most of his predecessors. War itself, in Hashimoto’s pronouncements, was to blame for the devastation and inhumanity of the conflict, as all Japanese (even the emperor) suffered with the rest of Asia.3  Even Hashimoto, whose previous statements and actions pegged him as a revisionist, toed the ambiguous government line during his years in the premiership.

Koizumi, then, was not the first to express stark views and then choose (or be forced) to moderate those views and retreat into deliberate ambiguity. From the earliest postwar days to the present, in fact, Japanese leaders have followed the same general pattern in addressing the issue of Japan’s responsibility for the war, no matter the ideological or political tendencies of the leader involved. From the very first official war commemoration in independent Japan (held on the day the occupation ended in 1952) to the statements and actions of Koizumi in the summer of 2001, Japanese leaders have taken a very similar approach to the politics of apology.

This deliberately ambiguous approach reflects a view of history that may be called the “renegade” view of the war.4  In this view, only a small group of “renegades” – mostly military men like Tojo Hideki – led Japan into war. This group essentially usurped the power of the emperor and misled the Japanese people into a self-destructive and imperialist war. Individual soldiers who fought for Japan, the Japanese people as a whole and even the emperor himself were blameless; they were “victims” of a militarist conspiracy. According to this view, issues of Japanese guilt were settled with the Tokyo War Crimes Trials and other less prominent tribunals, and issues of reparation were settled with the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951 and the series of bilateral agreements (with the signatories of the Peace Treaty and also Taiwan, South Korea, and the People’s Republic of China) that followed. As a result, all but a handful of Japanese join the many Koreans, Chinese, Filipinos, Malays, Americans, and countless others as “victims” of the war, and additional apologies and offers of compensation are unnecessary. As suggested by the deliberate ambiguity of Hashimoto and Koizumi, this “renegade” view has been the dominant and “official” view held by the political and media mainstream in postwar Japan, although (as discussed below) it has not been hegemonic in the sense that it supercedes and de-legitimizes other views of the war.5 

But why has this “renegade” view of the war remained dominant? Why do virtually all prime ministers – even those who seem to advocate revisionist views, like Hashimoto and perhaps Koizumi – ultimately retreat into this official view? Why are the relatively forthright apologies of more progressive prime ministers like Hosokawa Morihiro (1993) and Murayama Tomiichi (1994 and especially 1995) watered down by the opposition they engender and their own ultimate ambiguity? Why does the pattern seen in the careers of Hashimoto and Koizumi repeat with such regularity?

The answers to these questions lie in an analysis of the institutional structure set up in Japan after the end of World War II. In this article, I outline this argument by first discussing how a set of institutions helped channel official Japanese memory of the war and placed boundaries on how government leaders should speak and act in commemoration and remembrance of the war. Even ideologically opposed leaders have spoken and acted within the same set of institutional constraints, with a correspondingly high level of continuity in official discourse on the war. Second, I briefly discuss some of the key general consequences of this institutional framework, as Japanese leaders and other actors have responded to the set constraints. Finally, I offer a few reflections on the implications of my analysis for the future of the politics of apology, both within Japan and in Japan’s relations with its neighbors.

The Institutional Context of the Politics of Apology

In postwar Japan, the meaning and political importance of historical interpretations were bounded and channeled by a set of seemingly disparate institutions. These institutions helped codify and propagate – and ultimately came to embody – the “renegade” view of history outlined above. In so doing, they set the stage on which subsequent politically-relevant historical discourse would unfold, and ensured that this stage was invariably a political one. These institutions included: the Tokyo War Crimes Trials and the occupation purges of wartime leaders; a refashioned political role for the emperor; international treaties that codified war responsibility; a set of cultural institutions like museums, rituals, and commemoration days; and history education in Japan’s relatively centralized education system. I will discuss each of these institutions briefly, explaining how each helped set the terms of politically relevant historical debate in postwar Japan.

The Tokyo Trials and Occupation Purges

The International Military Tribunal for the Far East (or Tokyo Trials, as it is more readily known) codified Japanese war responsibility and enshrined the “renegade” view of the war as official gospel. The outcome of the trials, as prosecuted by the Americans and facilitated by prominent Japanese witnesses and even some of the defendants, clearly supported the “renegade” view. Page after page of testimony points the finger at a small group of militarists led by Tojo Hideki. Trial testimony paints a picture of tightly focused individual responsibility for the war and its atrocities, as one would expect from a war crimes tribunal modeled after domestic criminal courts; a more nuanced, complex, and contextually rich account is nowhere to be found.

Moreover, relatively few Japanese leaders were ultimately tried and convicted of the “crimes against peace” with which the allies charged them – a fact which reinforces the view that only a handful of renegade leaders was responsible for aggression. Most glaringly absent from the court’s indictments was the emperor, in whose name the war had been pursued and in whom the 1890 constitution vested ultimate and inviolate sovereignty. Indeed, it was a deliberate policy of the US occupation authorities to exonerate the emperor of blame, as US authorities hoped to use the emperor in achieving their own aims for Japan. General MacArthur, the Supreme Commander for Allied Powers (SCAP), prohibited the prosecution and the defense from calling the emperor as a witness, and SCAP refused to carry out even a peremptory investigation of the emperor’s possible liability for actions carried out by his formal subordinates.6 

Once the verdict was issued, SCAP further ensured that the “Tokyo Trials view of history” remained dominant in Japan. American censors required the Japanese press to support the verdict, to back up the prosecution’s specific charges against Tojo and other Japanese leaders, and even to use the term “Pacific War” (thus de-emphasizing Japanese aggression in mainland Asia) when referring to the conflict. Like Japan’s conservative leaders, US officials hoped the trials would settle the issue of war responsibility so attention could be more clearly focused on the task of rebuilding Japan as an US ally. In both process and outcome, the Tokyo Trials codified, institutionalized, and propagated the “renegade” view of the war. They helped weave this view of the war into the institutional tapestry of postwar Japan, ensuring that this view achieved and maintained official sanction.

In addition to the Tokyo Trials, the waves of purges carried out during the occupation further entrenched the “renegade” view of the war. As with the Tokyo Trials, relatively few people were removed from public life (0.29% of the population, in contrast with 2.5% in US-occupied areas of Germany), and many of those were ultimately rehabilitated, even before the end of the occupation.7  However, those who were purged included many who may have earlier questioned the “renegade” view of the war that prospered under Yoshida Shigeru and other postwar leaders. For example, had more revisionist figures like Hatoyama Ichiro or Kishi Nobusuke (both of whom served as prime minister after the occupation) found themselves in power before the institutional framework of postwar Japan had been established, the outcome may have been quite different. As a result, while the Tokyo Trials institutionalized the view that relatively few were responsible for the war, the occupation purges pushed out of office those who may have fostered an even more narrow view of war guilt. Thus the purges, in addition to the Trials, helped institutionalize the “renegade” view that has dominated postwar political discourse about the war.

The Emperor

The constitutional and symbolic reinterpretation of the role of the emperor – also carried out under American occupation – further institutionalized the “renegade” view of the war. For example, the explicit political position of the emperor was formally rewritten in the postwar Constitution. The emperor – the former “head of the empire” in whom “the rights of sovereignty” were combined – now was cast in Article 1 as the “symbol of the state and of the unity of the Japanese people.” The imperial throne was thus shorn, at least in theory, of its political potency and – more to the point – its political accountability. Both Japanese and American authorities proclaimed that this new politically inert role for the emperor was merely the formalization of the long-standing reality in Japan. Thus, in addition to removing the postwar emperor from mere politics, this move also implicitly absolved the emperor of blame for the war. If Hirohito had always been a mere symbol of the Japanese state, then clearly he had not called the shots or even condoned the actions of his militarist subordinates. The leaders who did lead Japan into war were not subordinates at all, it could be argued, but usurpers of the emperor’s authority and abusers of the legitimacy that authority provided. And if the emperor himself – he in whose name the war had been declared and atrocities had been committed – was blameless, how could the Japanese people be held responsible for the war? If the emperor had been duped and victimized by the militarist conspiracy, then so too had the Japanese people, the civilian leadership, and even the majority of officers in the army. The constitutional reinterpretation of the emperor’s position clearly reinforced the “renegade” view of the war.

In addition to explicitly reinterpreting the emperor’s constitutional position, occupation and government authorities symbolically reinforced this reinterpretation. For example, documents and diaries were released which portrayed Hirohito as a man of peace who opposed the attack on Pearl Harbor and worked behind the scenes to persuade militarist leaders to surrender, culminating in his decisive intervention in the deliberations that produced the surrender announcement of August 15, 1945. Moreover, while the typical image of the wartime emperor was of a military officer clad in full regalia riding a white stallion, the postwar image was of “Citizen Hirohito,” a quiet, unassuming “everyman” who wore plain Western clothes and a brown fedora. Hirohito was sent on a wave of public tours and appearances to reinforce this image.8  This symbolic position of the emperor as a peace-loving symbol of “ordinary” and now “pacifist” Japan was explicitly reinforced in the 1947 constitution, whose first two chapters outline the symbolic position of the emperor and the postwar renunciation of war. In short, then, both the new constitutional position of the emperor and the symbolic reinforcement of that position further institutionalized the “renegade” view of the war.

International Treaties

A set of international treaties and agreements, combined with the unwillingness of the Japanese government to provide officially-funded reparations or compensation beyond the relatively token amounts determined in the 1950s, formed the international legal basis for the “renegade” view of history. Most important was the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951, signed by Japan and fifty of its former enemies (notably absent were the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, Taiwan, and both North and South Korea). This treaty was important because it explicitly codified the monetary component of Japan’s war responsibility, and it set the international legal precedent for subsequent bilateral reparations agreements. Article 14 of the treaty stated that “the Allied Powers waive all reparations claims,” and that Japan’s resources were “not presently sufficient” to pay large sums to cover damages inflicted during the war. The treaty also recognized (in Article 11) the verdicts of the Tokyo Trials as the final word on Japanese war responsibility.

As noted above, the most important state “victims” of Japanese imperialism (China and the two Koreas) were not signatories to this treaty. But when normalization agreements were signed between Japan and South Korea (1965) and between Japan and the People’s Republic of China (The Tanaka-Zhou Communique of 1972 and the Treaty of Friendship of 1978), the San Francisco framework was reinforced. South Korea demanded the relatively paltry sum of $500 million from the Japanese government (at a time when the Japanese government had “sufficient resources” to pay much more), with no provision for future claims, while the Chinese fully renounced their “demands for war indemnities from Japan.” These bilateral agreements thus reinforced the principles of both material and moral war responsibility embedded in the San Francisco Peace Treaty. Indeed, since all three of these treaties were signed, the Japanese government has repeatedly referred to their legal precedence in denying the legitimacy of subsequent claims (for example, from so-called “Comfort Women” or former prisoners of war) for reparations to governments or compensation to individuals.9  The international legal framework established by these treaties remains in force today.

Cultural Institutions

Not only did formal government institutions embody and propagate the “renegade” view of the war, but a set of what may be termed “cultural institutions” – including museums and commemoration days with accompanying rituals and ceremonies – further reinforced the “renegade” view and helped set the terms of political discourse about the war. In a country where museums abound and where aspects of ancient, medieval, and early modern history are widely commemorated, museums on the war have, until very recently, been few and far between. Those that did memorialize the war often focused on specific aspects of the war or glorified the nobility of Japanese sacrifice during the war. In the latter category are museums that take at least an implicitly revisionist perspective, such as the Yushukan Hall at the Yasukuni Shrine or the kamikaze pilot museum at Chiran in Kagoshima Prefecture. These museums – far from exploring the issue – ignore the issue of Japan’s war responsibility. They explicitly glorify Japanese servicemen and their aims, placing particular emphasis on those who (like the kamikaze pilots) committed suicide in the name of the emperor. While neither of these museums (nor others like them) is officially sponsored by the Japanese government, the Yushukan was until recently the only prominent and permanent museum in Tokyo which explicitly remembers the war.

Museums commemorating the atomic bombings – especially the Peace Museum in Hiroshima – have been more prominent and heavily visited. The “Peace Museum” was not designed to memorialize the totality of the war. Rather, its focus has been overwhelmingly (and appropriately) on portraying the depth and scale of suffering caused by the atomic bomb – a trait it shares with the similar museum in Nagasaki. Until 1995, the museum also neglected to place the bombings in a historical context, building instead on the assumption that the bombings were evil and ought never to be repeated, no matter the context. The museum thus became a testament to the horrors of atomic war. Moreover, almost all Japanese children have been taken through one of the peace museums on school-sponsored field trips, while equally powerful exhibitions on Japanese aggression or atrocities have until very recently been unavailable for similar educational purposes. As a result, at least two generations of Japanese school children have been exposed to strong images of Japanese suffering under atomic attack without corresponding education in the suffering inflicted by the Japanese during the same general conflict. Therefore, the Peace Museum has perhaps unintentionally fostered the notion of Japanese victimhood that underlies the “renegade” view. Only in the 1990s did museums appear which featured more open exhibits of Japanese aggression and atrocities, but because they are so new and have fewer visitors than those mentioned above, their long-term influence remains unclear.10 

Commemoration days, and the rituals and ceremonies held on those days, also contributed to the official dominance of the “renegade” view. For example, August 6 memorializes the date when the first atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima. Each year, an extraordinary gathering of atomic bomb victims (hibakusha), prominent politicians (usually including the prime minister), progressive peace activists, ordinary citizens, and even right-wing revisionists converges on Hiroshima’s Peace Park, where speeches are given and a period of silence is observed in memory of those who died from the bomb and its after effects. Almost invariably, the prime minister gives a speech in which he decries the use of nuclear weapons and proclaims Japan’s intention (as the only nation ever to suffer atomic attack) to fight for nuclear non-proliferation and world peace. While the purpose and most of the effects of this commemoration are laudable and important, one unintended consequence may be the further propagation and establishment of the notion of Japanese victimhood, as the residents of Hiroshima (and Nagasaki, whose memorial service is held three days later) clearly suffered enormously and uniquely during the last war. This commemoration day thus helped to institutionalize and maintain the idea that a small group of renegade militarists led the inherently peaceful Japanese population to near annihilation by nuclear weapons.

In addition, more general war memorial ceremonies have been widely and repeatedly held in postwar Japan, especially since the end of the occupation. Over time, the most widely reported ceremonies have been held on August 15, the anniversary of Japanese surrender. This date has invariably featured important speeches, symbolic actions, and commemoration rituals that have helped institutionalize aspects of the war. While never officially recognized as a national holiday, August 15 corresponds with the celebration of o-bon, the period when many Japanese return to the home towns (furusato) and honor their ancestors. Hence, it has been used as a date on which to remember those who perished during the war.

Each August 15, at least three events of symbolic importance occur. First, the prime minister offers a speech or statement on the war, often issuing “apologies” and memorializing Japanese and other “victims” of the conflict. Second, this speech has been given for over thirty years at an enormous bereavement ritual held at Tokyo’s Budokan Hall and attended by top government officials, the emperor and empress, and the leaders and members of the JBFA. Third, many top government officials choose this day to worship at Yasukuni Shrine to both honor the war dead and at least implicitly glorify their actions. Prime Minister Mori Yoshiro’s speech at the August 15, 2000 Budokan gathering is typical in that he explicitly recognized Japanese victims of the war, expressed “regret” and “condolences” (but not “apology”) to largely unspecified non-Japanese victims of the war, and blamed the suffering on war in general rather than the specific actions taken by a government or people. He said, “The war caused tremendous pain and sorrow not only to our country but also to people in many countries, particularly those in neighboring Asian countries. We would like to express our deep regret and condolences to them sincerely.” War responsibility in such a statement is ambiguous, to say the least. The implication is that war just happens, rather like a natural disaster.

Though Mori is not known for his eloquence or political tact, his statements in 2000 actually follow a long-standing pattern set decades earlier and followed by nearly all of Mori’s predecessors. Even when some have attempted to break this pattern, they have run into significant obstacles. In 1995, for example, prime minister Murayama Tomiichi, a Socialist in coalition with the LDP, made it the goal of his administration to pass a strongly-worded “apology resolution” through the Diet and issue a clearly-worded apology of his own on August 15. In the end, however, the Diet refused to pass Murayama’s resolution and instead passed its own watered-down version that left war responsibility ambiguous and implicitly indicted the Western powers for forcing Japan into war. Hence, while Murayama’s statement on August 15 did express the clearest apology to date, his failure to pass the apology resolution and the actions of others in his own administration (many of whom worshiped at Yasukuni even while Murayama issued his statement) continued the pattern of ambiguity and obfuscation set by more conservative politicians. Rather than defuse the issue of war responsibility, as Murayama intended, the events of 1995 kept the issue alive and well.11 

History Education

In addition to the institutions already discussed, the national education system also helped propagate and establish the “renegade” view of history. From the early postwar period, the Japanese Ministry of Education, with the implicit and often explicit blessing of the occupation authorities, has sought to ensure that accounts of the war placing blame on anyone other than a small group of militarists do not appear in officially sanctioned textbooks. In comparison with much more detailed accounts of Japan’s earlier history, official history education has downplayed and even ignored the war. When the war is discussed, accounts of the atomic bombings or of the fire-bombing of Japanese cities (and the resultant societal effects of the bombings) are more prominent than more embarrassing aspects of the war, including the atrocities committed. Therefore, it is not entirely accurate to say that the government has sought to reassign war responsibility in its officially approved educational materials; rather, it has largely sought to avoid the issue altogether. This can be seen in the typically bland and passive prose used to describe the war in textbooks, in Ienaga Saburo’s (and others’) legal attempts to force the Ministry of Education to allow more open treatments of the war in its textbooks, and in the ultimate failure of Nakasone Yasuhiro’s administration to introduce revisionist textbooks in the 1980s.12  Only in the 1990s, and after the death of Hirohito, the (albeit temporary) collapse of LDP dominance, and the exertion of enormous pressure from progressives at home and abroad, did the Ministry of Education begin to introduce even tepid accounts of Japanese atrocities. Even then, a powerful array of politicians, officials, and conservative academics united to oppose such accounts.

Furthermore, the entrance examinations, which govern educational advancement and on which most educational effort is focused, almost entirely ignore the war. Hence, unlike other aspects and eras of Japanese history which appear on entrance examinations, the war rarely crosses the educational stage of Japanese students preparing for the rigorous examinations. Therefore, while the control of the Ministry of Education is far from monolithic, and while some individual teachers have defied ministry guidelines and introduced their students to more balanced accounts of the war, the Ministry’s policies and the structure of the examination system have contributed to the dominance of a view that gives a place to Japanese suffering and downplays the suffering inflicted by Japan on others.

In summary, then, a set of seemingly unrelated institutions shaped and channeled politically relevant historical debate in postwar Japan. These institutions, which included the Tokyo Trials, a redefined imperial institution, a set of international treaties and legal precedents, cultural institutions like museums and commemoration rituals, and history education, helped establish as dominant the “renegade” view of the war, ensuring that view would set the terms of the debate and would remain the official view espoused even by prime ministers whose personal inclinations (like Hashimoto and Koizumi) contradict its basic tenets.

Four Consequences of the Institutional Framework

In addition to establishing the “renegade” view as the official and dominant, if not hegemonic, view of the war in postwar politics, the institutional framework discussed above had at least four perhaps unintended consequences. These consequences have in turn contributed to the continuing importance, and even inevitability, of war memory in Japanese politics and political discourse.

Alternative Views of the War

While the “renegade” view outlined earlier remained both dominant and orthodox, it also opened the door to alternative views, for reasons discussed below. The first of these alternatives might be termed the “progressive” or “structuralist” view, which holds that the country was not led into war by a small clique of militarists. Rather, the structure of the political, economic, and social systems in prewar Japan were inherently flawed and led inevitably to war. According to this view, then, the Tokyo Trials outlined an exceedingly narrow conception of war responsibility, which in fact spreads to the system itself and indirectly implicates those who upheld or even refused to challenge the prewar system. Although this view’s emphasis on “structural” culpability implicitly downplays the notion of individual responsibility for the war, it also implies the need for greater levels of compensation, more far-reaching and open apologies, and even broad structural reforms in Japanese politics and society.

The progressive view remained a challenge to the “renegade” view throughout the postwar period, partly because the official view held up so poorly to historical scrutiny. Indeed, the prevalence of the “renegade” view depended on the ability of the Ministry of Education and other official organizations to suppress, paper over, or somehow explain away evidence of Japanese aggression and atrocities that did not explicitly blame a cabal of militarists. The government and other supporters of the “renegade” view were able to do so only imperfectly, and the progressive view found adherents among some of Japan’s more prominent intellectuals, whose positions in the academy and access to the media ensured there was an audience for their critique of official orthodoxy.

Similarly, the very triumph of the “renegade” view allowed for the resurgence of a largely right-wing revisionist interpretation of the war. In this revisionist perspective, neither a small group of militarists nor the structure of Japan’s prewar system is to blame. Indeed, Japan is not to be blamed at all. At worst, Japan launched a self-defensive war to fend off the Western imperialists who threatened Japan’s independence in East Asia. And at best, Japan’s war was a noble one, aimed not at imperialist conquest but at liberating East Asia from Western domination. This view was fed by the relative arbitrariness with which the Tokyo Trials were carried out and by the fact that the emperor’s war responsibility was never admitted. Revisionists reasoned that if the emperor himself was blameless, and if the Trials unfairly singled out only a handful of defendants, then is anyone really to blame? For revisionists, then, postwar institutions revealed not the guilt of a small group of militarists but the vengeance imposed on Japan by the victorious Americans. After the establishment of the “renegade” view as official orthodoxy in postwar Japan, this revisionist view posed a constant challenge, both through interest groups like the JBFA and by politicians who questioned the “victor’s justice” imposed by the Americans in the Tokyo Trials.13 

Revisionist Interest Groups

Partly because such alternative views prospered under the dominance of the “renegade” view, interest groups who sought to influence the debate also emerged. Foremost among such groups is the JBFA. This group, founded in 1947 to fight for the restoration of military pensions and condolence payments cut off by the occupation authorities, later (especially under the leadership of convicted war criminal, later cabinet minister, and conservative power-broker Kaya Okinori) moved toward and ultimately embraced a revisionist agenda. The group built a formidable support base and grew in political clout through its provision of financing to cooperative politicians and its ability to deliver blocks of votes. Partly because of the political influence of the JBFA, the Japanese government has given “Japanese victims” of the war a package of benefits exceeding 40 trillion yen.14  In 1995, when the Murayama government proclaimed its intention to pass an apology resolution through the Diet, the JBFA joined with other like-minded groups in pressuring Diet members to mobilize against the resolution. The “National Committee” set up by the JBFA threatened to withdraw electoral support from conservative politicians who supported (or even refused to oppose) the resolution. As a result, the resolution actually passed not only avoided apology, it also implicitly blamed the Western powers for the outbreak of war. Even then, a large number of Diet members boycotted the vote rather than be associated with the resolution. The JBFA thus played an important role in mobilizing opposition to the apology resolution – to the point that the final resolution pleased no one (including Murayama, and the Chinese and Koreans who had been the intended audience). This powerful revisionist interest group has proven its ability to influence political discourse on the war.15  Other groups remain similarly active – as evidenced by the role played by the nationalist Shinto organization Sodaikai, one of whose members is former LDP secretary general Koga Makoto – in persuading Prime Minister Koizumi not to abandon his earlier pledge to visit Yasukuni Shrine.16 

The Politicization of the Past

The close tie between postwar institutions and the “renegade” view of history, coupled with the vigorous challenges to that view, ensured that history would remain a highly contested political issue in postwar Japan. To question the “renegade” view is also to question the institutions that established and maintain (and are partly legitimized by) that view. For example, to adopt a “structuralist” view of the war is also to question the legitimacy of the postwar institutional structure. For if the very structure of prewar  institutions led inevitably to war, then the continuity of many of those institutions into postwar Japan signals the need for far-reaching (even revolutionary) institutional and structural change. On the other hand, if the revisionist view that Japan is not to blame triumphs, then what changes were instituted during the occupation and after are illegitimate. If Japan was not at fault in the war, then what is the need for a new constitution, for a redefinition of the emperor’s political role, for a prohibition on war and the maintenance of armed forces, and for other changes that were instituted in the postwar era? The Tokyo Trials and the occupation itself thus seem merely the vengeance imposed on Japan by the victorious Americans, not the noble efforts to “demilitarize” and “democratize” Japan so its government could be returned to the people (from the militarists who had usurped authority).

It should be no surprise, then, that most prominent politicians and opinion leaders remain disturbingly ambiguous about historical views of the war. Even those (as Hashimoto and Koizumi, above) who express strong views before reaching the highest positions find themselves retreating into ambiguity when faced with the potential political and institutional consequences of taking a stronger stand. The very institutions on which they depend to preserve the postwar system rely on a view of history that places the blame on the shoulders of those already punished and executed. To adhere to less ambiguous views is to question the institutional framework and to acknowledge the revolutionary or reactionary demands of those who hold stronger views.

In contradiction to “conventional wisdom” in the Western media, then, the inability of Japanese leaders to present a united face in apologizing for past aggression does not reflect the notion that war responsibility has never been addressed in Japan. Neither does it reflect the notion that Japan is a nation of right-wing revisionists and closet militarists. While Japan has its share of revisionists, most Japanese reject that view. Rather, the very plurality of views, coupled with the close tie between historical interpretation and political institutions, is one reason why the issue is so difficult to resolve. While the “renegade” view has characterized the official government line, the government has rarely if ever spoken with a united voice. Even when the cabinet has united behind a single statement or point of view, other prominent politicians or opinion leaders have betrayed that unity. The issue is too closely tied to hotly contested political and ideological issues to be resolved in an easy and straightforward manner.

Japanese Sense of Victimhood

Finally, another consequence of the dominance of the “renegade” view has been the emergence and prevalence of a sense of “victimhood” in postwar Japan. The one issue on which all – progressives, revisionists, and proponents of the “renegade “ view alike – agree is that the atomic bombings of Japan were evil and should never be repeated. The one commemoration in which all Japanese share, regardless of the specific view of the war, is that of the atomic bombings. As a result, virtually all Japanese share at least some sense of Japanese victimhood that is inextricably intertwined with such commemoration. Moreover, this sense of victimhood resonates powerfully with many older Japanese whose actual experiences of genuine suffering are much more vivid than the obscured accounts of suffering inflicted by Japanese. Perhaps the clearest indication of the power of this sense of victimhood is the fact that official government compensation to those classified as Japanese victims of the war outstrips that extended to foreign victims on a scale of roughly 40 to 1.17  This sense of victimhood is another powerful constraint on any political leader who may seek to issue a more strongly worded or internationally acceptable apology or offer of compensation.

Final Reflections

In summary, a specific set of institutions established in Japan after 1945 explains the continuing importance of the memory of World War II in Japanese domestic politics and foreign relations. These institutions, which included the Tokyo War Crimes Trials, the redefined position of the emperor, international treaties, cultural institutions of commemoration, and history education, established the “renegade” view as the official story of the war and bounded subsequent political discourse on the war. Moreover, this institutional framework had a number of perhaps unintended but very important consequences, including the emergence of alternative views to contest official orthodoxy, the rise of powerful interest groups to place further constraints on debate, the politicization of the past, and a widespread conception of Japanese victimhood. Each of these consequences has in turn contributed to the persistent salience of this issue in Japanese politics and to the apparent difficulty of reconciling historical views in Japan’s relations with its former enemies.

Thus, even when seemingly committed revisionists like Hashimoto Ryutaro ascend to Japan’s highest positions of power, they retreat into the ambiguity and institutional safety of the “renegade” view established as official orthodoxy. And even when seemingly committed reformers like Koizumi Junichiro promise both far-reaching institutional change and a shift in the politics of apology, they most often backtrack into the same rhetorical and symbolic territory inhabited by less ambitious predecessors. Moreover, my analysis suggests that this issue will likely remain difficult to resolve in the foreseeable future, because this issue is so closely intertwined with the postwar institutional framework. Fundamental institutional change must accompany transformation in the political discourse on war responsibility. A resolution to this issue, in other words, is not just a matter of a Japanese leader finally stepping forward and issuing the apology that has long been desired by many both inside and outside of Japan.18  Rather, a reassessment of the official Japanese position on the war necessarily involves a fundamental reassessment of institutions as basic as the postwar constitution. And this, in turn, points to a fundamental reassessment of postwar politics, social and economic structures, and national identity. The obstacles that lie in the way of such reassessment, while not insurmountable, are formidable.

Endnotes

 1 For Koizumi’s statements and accounts of his actions, see the evening edition of Mainichi Shinbun, August 15, 2001; and Japan Times, August 16, 2001.

 2 Hashimoto Ryutaro, Seiken Dakkai Ron (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1994), 98-100.

 3 For newspaper accounts of Hashimoto’s Yasukuni visit and his August 15 statements, see the dailies, Asahi Shinbun and Japan Times, July 30 and August 16, 1996.

 4 I thank Lou Perez for suggesting the term “renegade” as a way to characterize this general view of the war.

 5  In this sentence I place quotation marks around the word “official” to indicate that the “renegade” view is that espoused in public and in official documents by the Japanese government. It is reflected in the statements and actions of virtually all postwar prime ministers (while they are in office), and it is the view expressed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA). However, as my analysis below is intended to make clear, this view has never been hegemonic even among top-level politicians. When the prime minister or MOFA proclaim the “renegade” view, cabinet-level politicians issue statements or engage in behavior that reflect fundamentally different views of the war. Thus, while the “renegade” view is embodied in government policies and official statements, the government (broadly defined) has never spoken with a united voice on the issue. I do not repeat my usage of quotation marks in the rest of this article, but readers should take note of the fundamentally contested and ambiguous nature of “official history.”

 6 For a more complete treatment, see John Dower, Embracing Defeat (New York: Norton, 1999), especially 277-301.

 7 For relevant figures, see Howard B. Shonberger, Aftermath of War (Kent, OH: The Kent State University Press, 1989), 61.

 8 See Takashi Fujitani, “Electronic Pageantry and Japan’s ‘Symbolic Emperor,’” in Journal of Asian Studies 51:4 (November 1992): 824-50.

 9 For one statement of this position in English, see Umezu Itaru’s opinion piece in Far Eastern Economic Review (August 10, 2000).

 10 See Arai Shin’ichi, SensoHakubutsukan (Tokyo: Iwanami Booklets, 1995). The new museums include Osaka International Peace Center and Ritsumeikan University International Peace Museum. See Sorano Yoshihiro, “Piisu Osaka o Meguru Kibo,” in Kikan Senso Sekinin Kenkyu 29 (Autumn 2000): 52-5.

 11 On the events surrounding the resolution’s passage, see Ryuji Mukae, “Japan’s Diet Resolution on World War Two,” in Asian Survey 36:10 (October 1996): 1019.

 12 For an overview of Ienaga’s three lawsuits and the mixed verdicts that resulted, see Nozaki Yoshiko and Inokuchi Hiromitsu, “Japanese Education, Nationalism, and Ienaga Saburo’s Textbook Lawsuits,” in Censoring History: Citizenship and Memory in Japan, Germany, and the United States, ed. by Laura Hein and Mark Selden (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2000): 96-126.

 13 Prominent politicians who have expressed revisionist views include Hatoyama Ichiro, Kishi Nobusuke, Shigemitsu Mamoru, Nakasone Yasuhiro, Okuno Seisuke, Nagano Shigeto, Mori Yoshiro, and, as discussed above, Hashimoto Ryutaro.

 14 On the JBFA’s political clout, see Tanaka Nobumasa, Tanaka Hiroshi, and Hata Nagami, Izoku to Sengo (Tokyo: Iwanami Shinsho, 1995), 194-204.

 15 Interestingly, while revisionist interest groups have been the most prominent and active throughout the postwar period, the last 10-15 years have seen the emergence of progressive interest groups who challenge both the “renegade” view and revisionist groups like the JBFA. Such groups include the Center for Research and Documentation on Japan’s War Responsibility, the Network for Postwar Compensation and the various groups organized to press the case of the so-called “Comfort Women” forced to be sex slaves for Japanese troops.

 16 Yomiuri Shinbun, August 17, 2001.

 17 See Tanaka Hiroshi, “Why Is Asia Demanding Postwar Compensation Now?” in Hitotsubashi Journal of Social Studies 28 (1996): 11-12. For more on the “sense of victimhood,” see James J. Orr, The Victim as Hero: Ideologies of Peace and National Identity in Postwar Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001).

 18 Such calls for apologies appear often in the press in China, the two Koreas, the United States, and elsewhere. For just one US example, see George Gedda, “Why Won’t Japan Acknowledge Its Past,” Associated Press, August 15, 2001.