The PRC government has repeatedly accused Japan of not apologising for the atrocities committed by Japanese troops during the Second World War. Is it true?
In 1972, during talks between Mao and then Japanese Prime Minister Kakuei Tanaka when Japan was normalising relations with the People’s Republic of China, Mao reportedly told Tanaka that “there is no need for apologies,” arguing that Japan’s invasion had inadvertently helped the Chinese Communists by weakening their rival Kuomintang (KMT) and enabling the Communist Party’s eventual victory.
Until the early 1990s, I still heard Chinese people saying “it’s good that they invaded us”. But that’s based on the context that it woke Chinese people up to the “fact” that the KMT is bad and the CCP is good. Towards the 2000s, the narrative was changed to fool people into thinking that it was the CCP that fought the Japanese.
In 1990 Emperor Akihito said “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.”
In 1993, PM Morihiro Hosokawa declared that Japan had pursued a “war of aggression, a war that was wrong”.
In 1998, Jiang Zemin pushed for a written public apology from Japan. Jiang haughtily lectured the Japanese PM Keizo Obuchi in front of the emperor saying “Japanese militarism tread the wrong path of invasion and expansion and caused great suffering to the people of China and other nations. I am opposed to the opinion that the problem of history has been sufficiently discussed.”
The ruling LDP realised that any further concessions in China’s favour would result in humiliation and loss of leadership.
Taken from the book Everything Under The Heavens by Howard W. French
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