Japan is not Germany
When Japanese PM, Shinzo Abe, recently said that this generation should be the last one to apologize for Japan’s World War II related atrocities, I could see why: how long could future generations keep apologizing? I went on to wonder why the Germans don't ever feel the same way. But it turns out that German and Japanese perceptions of their roles during World War II are significantly different. One very important difference was that the German defeat ended up with the removal from power of Hitler and his Nazi regime. Whereas in case of defeated Japan, the ruling Emperor Hirohito under whose command Japan had marched, was not prosecuted because General Douglas MacArthur felt that “a crushed people would be more biddable with their emperor still in place”. That difference meant the Germans could distance themselves from Nazism (to some extent) and look at their crimes a bit more objectively than the Japanese could. Further, many Japanese have always questioned why Japan...