While being consistently unrepentant, some Japanese politicians last Thursday played again the trick of confounding right and wrong by saying Japan's Class-A criminals in World War II (1939-45) were wrongly convicted by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in 1948 and claiming the 14 killers' wartime doings were no longer considered as crimes in Japan.

In sharp contrast with the nonsense-talking Japanese right-wing politicians, a 92-year-old Japanese veteran dropped to his knees in a recent visit to China to show remorse for his sins during Japan's aggression against China in the 1930-1940s.

As varied activities were held in China and worldwide this year to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the end of the War of Resistance Against Japan in China (1937-45) and the World War II, the recent remarks made by Japanese Parliamentary Secretary for Health, Labor and Welfare Masahiro Morioka and Kyuma Fumio, chairman of the Policy Research Council of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party, were not only ill-timed but also "ridiculous", as condemned by Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Kong Quan.

Actually, the two Japanese politicians' rhetoric not only immediately provoked "indignation" among the Chinese people but also gave another heavy blow to the already strained Sino-Japanese relations.

In the past four years, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi insisted on visiting the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Japan's war dead including some Class-A war criminals, despite vehement protests from China and the Republic of Korea (ROK).

By defining the shrine tours as a "domestic issue" and taking a defiant attitude toward foreign criticism, Koizumi and other Japanese officials repeatedly needled the most sensitive nerve of Japan's war-scarred neighbors as well as singled out Japan in the worldwide reflection upon the World War II calamities for refusing to search its soul properly.

As one of the two initiators of the World War II, Japan has never concretely gestured sorry for the huge pains it brought to the world and the disgusting crimes committed in Asian countries during the War. It seemed beyond the Japanese government to grow the courage and wisdom of facing up to the history and taking the responsibility accordingly as shown in the post-war doings by the other World War II wrongdoer Germany.

In 1970, the then German Chancellor Willy Brandt knelt down in a gesture of shame and humility at the site of the Jewish rebellion in the Warsaw ghetto in 1943, highlighting his country's regret over the German fascists' doings and winning worldwide applause for his country's sincere and sensible perception of the war history.

The Germans also erected a monument in memory of the massacred Jews in their capital Berlin, dwarfing a Tokyo-based memorial stone glorifying the Asian country's seven hanged war criminals.

The different attitudes taken by Germany and Japan toward the wartime history logically lead to dissimilar outcomes.

As a result of a sincerely worded remorse and concrete moves to repair relations with the European war victims, both individuals and nations, Germany has slowly but surely come back together with the rest of Europe and regained worldwide recognition as a responsible and reliable country.

In a clearly different mood, the Japanese government, some politicians in particular, though ambitious to reestablish Japan as a political power matching with the country's strong economic muscles, still refused to pierce into the World War II falsehood six decades after the War and continued to adhere to a historical perception with the Japanese ego at the center.

Defying a series of good-will moves made by the Chinese side to mend Sino-Japanese ties, which have been seriously hurt by Japan's unwise moves concerning the War memories, Japan should be held completely accountable for the current entanglement with China in this regard.

Moreover, it is highly doubtable that Japan has the credibility of being true in words and resolute in deeds as it failed to materialize previous commitments to remorse for its history of aggression and take concrete actions to prevent throwbacks to the War from dogging relations with the neighboring Asian countries.

"No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. Each man's death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind. Therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee," reads a poem written by British metaphysical poet John Donne some five centuries ago.

As the world becomes increasingly like a global village, any one-sided hardline foreign policy and historical perception will definitely meet with a dead end and cause great troubles to the policy-makers and believers in the perception themselves.

Source: Xinhua