Aug. 15 marks the 75th anniversary of the end of World War II. How can we understand where Japan has come from, where it is today and where it is going? To answer these questions, it's important to reflect on just how much the world has changed since Japan’s surrender.
A good place to start is the 70th anniversary in 2015, arguably the low point in Sino-Japanese relations. To mark the occasion, the Advisory Panel on the History of the 20th Century and on Japan’s Role and World Order in the 21st Century released its report Aug. 6. It acknowledged Japan’s aggression in East Asia, writing that Japan “lost sight of the global trends, and caused much harm to various countries, largely in Asia, through a reckless war.”
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe reified much of the report in his Aug. 14 statement on the 70th anniversary of the end of WWII that after the “withdrawal from the League of Nations, Japan gradually transformed itself into a challenger to the new international order that the international community sought to establish after tremendous sacrifices. Japan took the wrong course and advanced along the road to war.”