Germany and Japan were the Axis powers during World War II. But after defeat in the war, they took very different paths when it came to acknowledgement of what they did during the war and how they tried to heal the historical scars.
In short, Germany was reborn as a respected member of the international community and a leader of Europe as it achieved reconciliation with its neighbors by squarely confronting its past misdeeds, including the Holocaust.
In contrast, Japan has yet to settle historical issues, with its attitude toward its past wrongdoings still provoking neighboring countries who suffered at its hands during the war and colonial period.
So the visit to Japan by German Chancellor Angela Merkel drew attention because it came before both Germany and Japan mark the 70th anniversary of their defeat in World War II.
Moreover, Merkel’s visit to Tokyo, her first in seven years, came at a time when Japan’s relations with South Korea and China were at their lowest points in many years, due to Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s historical revisionism and neo-nationalism.
This being the case, the German leader’s message was clear: Japan should confront its past directly and openly and make sincere efforts to reconcile with its neighbors.
Merkel said that Germany was able to return to a respected place in the international society because of its efforts to face its World War II atrocities, including Nazism and the Holocaust.
“This was possible first because Germany did face its past squarely, but also because the Allied Powers who controlled Germany after the war would attach great importance to Germany coming to grips with its past,” she said in a lecture hosted by the Asahi Shimbun newspaper.
Later, Merkel kept the tone of her remarks even with Abe at her side: “There was debate, sometimes an acrimonious debate, about how to deal with the past, how to do justice to the horrors of National Socialism (Nazism),” she said during a post-summit joint news conference with Abe.
“After the war, dealing with our past was one of the conditions for reconciliation with Germany’s European neighbors,” she said. Japanese media also reported that Merkel, in a meeting with the leader of the main opposition, urged Japan to address the issue of the military sex slavery.
Remarks like these are not easy to hear from a foreign leader visiting Japan, considering its leader is still trying to whitewash its wartime atrocities.
Merkel said she was not in Tokyo to give Japan advice on its past, and lessons should be learned by its own people.
But the German leader would not have mentioned how Germany dealt with its past had she not known that Abe visited a shrine honoring Class-A war criminals and is trying to water down previous government statements that acknowledged and apologized for Japan’s aggression and atrocities, such as its military sexual slavery.
The chancellor did mention that neighbors too have their due roles to take in order to leave the past behind: “Reconciliation always requires two sides. We saw after World War II that France was ready to reach out to us.”
In East Asia, either South Korea or China or both could do what France did with Germany, but only when Japan does what Germany did with its past.
On the eve of Merkel’s arrival in Tokyo, Abe and his ruling party vowed to inherit the tradition of visiting the Yasukuni Shrine and amend its pacifist constitution. This alone demonstrates that we in East Asia are dealing with someone who is totally different from leaders of Germany and that real reconciliation with Japan is likely to remain elusive.
