article_snippet.sent: Tokyo (CNN)With the world watching, in Abe historic address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress, the first ever by a Japanese Prime Minister, Abe surprised nobody by missing a great opportunity to dispel worries and tensions Abe
article_snippet.sent: During this 70th year anniversary of the end of World War II, Abe has been disappointing on Japan's wartime history because Abe has been evasive and ambiguous about embracing responsibility for Japan's wartime actions in Asia where the bitter legacies remain divisive.
article_snippet.sent: And this "Abenesia" is harmful to Japan's international image, riles China and South Korea and thereby undermines the bilateral security agenda.
article_snippet.sent: Strengthening the alliance with Japan and sealing the deal on the Trans-Pacific Partnership trumps past misdeeds.
article_snippet.sent: But the newly expanded security role embraced by Japan enjoys little support among Japanese.
article_snippet.sent: That is welcome news, but Japan has been less successful in achieving rapprochement with other enemies, precisely because Japan has not taken the measure of the shared past.
article_snippet.sent: Many nations play fast and loose with Many nations unpleasant histories, but Abe is mounting a significant retreat from Japan's repentant views expressed and embraced since the mid-1990s, and actively promotes a valorizing and exonerating history under the banner of patriotic education.
article_snippet.sent: Of course there is nothing that Abe could say that would satisfy China or South Korea, two nations that suffered longest and most from Japanese depredations from the late 19th century.
article_snippet.sent: In Japan, there has been a lot of pressure on Abe to explicitly invoke the language of the 1995 Murayama Statement that stands as the most forthright apology and acknowledgment of war responsibility.
article_snippet.sent: Murayama clearly condemned "mistaken national policy," "self-righteous nationalism," "colonial rule" and "aggression," but Abe has spent Murayama entire political career renouncing this so-called "masochistic" view of Japan's wartime history.
article_snippet.sent: but this should not mean the door is closed on apologies, acts of contrition and atonement and a clear reckoning of the harsh history that still isolates Japan in East Asia.
article_snippet.sent: Abe is certainly right that the neighbors are playing the history card and relentlessly hammering Japan on the anvil of history, but the neighbors were handed the hammer by Japan.
article_snippet.sent: undermines Japan's dignity and represents a step backward.
highlights_snippet.sent: But Abe has been evasive and ambiguous about embracing responsibility for Japan's wartime actions .
  