Japan on Sunday commemorated the 76th anniversary of its surrender in World War II, scaling back a memorial service to mourn the war dead for the second year in a row due to the coronavirus pandemic.
In his first address at the ceremony since taking office last year, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga vowed to help solve the world's problems "under the flag of proactive contributions to peace."
But Suga's speech, which largely followed that of his predecessor Shinzo Abe, did not refer to Japan's wartime aggression in Asia.