German media criticize Japan's attitude to wartime crimes

Leading German newspapers are of the view that a lack of thorough remorse and self-reflection by Japan for its wartime crimes is at the root of the recent protests in China and South Korea.

Japan failed to win its neighbor's trust and its apologies made in the past "appeared rather to be politically opportune," Germany 's mainstream newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung said in a front-page article Monday.

The revision of the history textbooks by Japanese right-wing groups evoked the nightmare of its neighbors, the newspaper said in another front-page editorial last week.

Instead of self-examining why the neighboring countries reacted so vehemently, Japan treated itself as a victim of the history, the editorial said.

Japan's repentance and atonement have remained at the level of symbolistic gesture and compensation through financial assistance,it said. "Today, 60 years after the capitulation, Japan still regards itself only as war-loser, not as perpetrator and responsible for what has happened."

"Japan could not settle up with its neighbors unless it learned to accept the neighboring countries' sight of the past," the editorial said. "Politically, Japan could also benefit from the learning process."

Another mainstream German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung criticized the Japanese government for hurting the feelings of its neighbors. Each time when Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi visited the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors 2.5 million Japanese war dead including war criminals from World War II, each time when the Japanese government defended its revision of history textbooks, Japan added fuel to the flames, the newspaper said last week.

To the protests in Beijing, Japan has by now shown no sign of self-criticism, it said.

The Japanese hold that they have done enough to the settlement of the historical issues. What they have ignored is that judgment should not be made by the heir of perpetrators, it said.

Source: Xinhua