Critics argue that Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's visit to Pearl Harbor this week to pay his and Japan's condolences to the fallen as an insincere and calculated gesture. They insist that the visit is geopolitically motivated and counter to his long-standing track record of participating in government committees that have actively sought to whitewash Japan's imperial past or at least emphasize that Japan was a reluctant participant in a defensive war. Some have even advocated that Abe should visit Seoul and Nanjing to foster reconciliation in Northeast Asia and put the ghosts of Japan's imperial past behind them.
There is little doubt that geopolitics associated with the deepening Sino-Japanese rivalry is the primary motivation for Abe's visit to Pearl Harbor. Notwithstanding, the visit is rational, strategic and a demonstration that Abe's personal track record of revisionist and nationalist tendencies can and does coexist with his pragmatic and realist approach to governance.
This has been evidenced in his first stint as prime minister in 2006 where his first visit abroad was to Beijing following the tumultuous Sino-Japanese relations under Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. He understood at the time that the economic relationship with Beijing was in Japan's national interest and that he should prioritize policies with the national interests in mind rather than his own personal revisionist wish list.