In the Diet question-and-answer sessions so far between Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and opposition party leaders, Mr. Abe has been fuzzy on some key issues and has yet to present a clear-cut grand vision of what kind of country he wants to build.
Attacking Mr. Abe's theme of creating a "beautiful country," Mr. Yukio Hatoyama, secretary general of the Democratic Party of Japan, argued Monday that Mr. Abe's beautiful country would become one in which nationalism and authoritarianism have the political upper hand -- a country far removed from people's real lives.
In an attempt to dilute his reputed revisionist view of Japan's wars in the 1930s and '40s, Mr. Abe accepted the government's position expressed by then Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama in 1995, on the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II. In Murayama's statement, the government clearly apologized for the damage and suffering Japan's colonial rule and aggression had caused to people of other Asian nations. Mr. Abe also said the government will not make an issue of contesting the conclusions of the International Military Tribunal for the Far East as far as state-to-state relations are concerned.