History Japan marks 80 years since WWII defeat

China and South Korea have criticised past visits by senior Japanese officials that they say gloss over Tokyo's wartime actions and damage diplomatic ties. Supporters say the shrine honors all of Japan's war dead, regardless of their roles. No sitting Japanese prime minister has visited the shrine since Shinzo Abe in December 2013, drawing an expression of disappointment from then-U.S. President Barack Obama. The last premier to visit on the anniversary of Japan's surrender was Koizumi's father, Junichiro Koizumi, in 2006. Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba on Friday sent an offering to the shrine, Kyodo News reported. Another offering he made in October provoked criticism from both South Korea, a Japanese colony for 35 years, and China, whose territories were occupied by Japanese forces in World War II.

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"While the military war has ended, the history war continues," says Professor Gi-Wook Shin, of Stanford University, explaining the two sides remember those years differently, and those differences add to the tension. While the Chinese see Japanese aggression as a defining, and devastating, moment in their past, Japanese history focuses on its own victimhood - the destruction caused by the atom bombs and post-war recovery.

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That period is now being revisited under a regime that holds patriotism as central to its ambitions: "national rejuvenation" is how Xi Jinping describes his Chinese dream. While the Party heavily censors its own history, from the Tiananmen Square massacre to more recent crackdowns, it encourages remembering a more distant past – with an outside enemy. Xi even revised the date the war with Japan started – the Chinese government now counts the first incursions into Manchuria in 1931, which makes it a 14-year war, rather than eight years of full-fledged conflict.

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It is "also from millions of ordinary Chinese people to Japan. They've never issued a sincere apology, they are still worshipping [the war criminals], they are rewriting history – no-one will treat them as friends", the comment says, referring to some Japanese right-wing figures' dismissive remarks. Tokyo has issued apologies, but many Chinese people believe they are not profuse enough. "Japan keeps sending a conflicting message," Prof Shin says, referring to instances where leaders have contradicted each other in their statements on Japan's wartime history. For years, in Chinese history classes, students have been shown a photo of former West German Chancellor Willy Brandt kneeling before a memorial to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1970. The Chinese expect a similar gesture from Japan.

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