In some ways, Koizumi himself started an assertive foreign policy by defiantly visiting the Yasukuni shrine in Tokyo, where a large number of Japanese soldiers who died in various wars are buried. The shrine also has the graves of some war criminals who committed atrocities in imperial Japan’s depredations in China and Korea. Both Beijing and Seoul strongly objected to Koizumi’s Yasukuni visit and demanded apology for Japan’s wartime conduct.

Japan’s relations with China and the two Koreas is one of the main issues discussed in Japan these days. Abe has accepted that “Japan caused great damage and suffering to several Asian countries, particularly China and South Korea”. This, in fact, echoes the thinking of a majority of Japanese people today.

At the same time, Abe has also articulated the annoyance of most Japanese by asking, “How many times must Japan apologise?” Japan Times, an English-language newspaper, last week published a list of 20 occasions since 1945 when successive governments in Tokyo have either apologised or taken punitive action against those who praised imperial Japan’s wartime atrocities.

Noting that many former colonial powers around the world did many wrong things in the past, Abe has claimed that “there are different perceptions of who did what and why”. Therefore, he says, “Let us leave the analyses of historical facts primarily to historians.” Hence, Japan’s new PM’s message to its neighbours is: “Let’s bury the past and build a friendly and cooperative future together.”

What is hardly known in our country is that Japan’s next PM is a great friend of India. In one of his policy speeches, he has called for a “strategic dialogue with USA, India, Australia and EU countries” that “share common values” with Japan. Notice that India comes next only to US in his foreign policy vision.

... contd.