Emperor Akihito on Monday expressed "deep remorse" over World War II during the annual commemoration service at Nippon Budokan Hall in Tokyo marking Japan's surrender while Prime Minister Shinzo Abe used more ambiguous wording.
In his speech on the 71st anniversary of the surrender, Abe pledged that "we shall never again repeat the horrors of war" and underscored that Japan has not waged war for more than seven decades.
But he stopped short of mentioning Japan's wartime aggression overseas and omitted any mention of remorse.